Volume 1 — CHAPTER XIV (continued 3)

Ulrich Zasius, the Freiburg-im-Breisgau lawyer, who had hitherto been hesitating, wrote in enthusiastic praise of the work to Boniface Amerbach.[738] Duke George of Saxony expressed his thanks to the author in a letter, with the honest and not altogether unwarranted remark: “Had you come to your present decision three years ago, and withstood Luther’s shameful heresies in writing instead of merely opposing him secretly, as though you were not willing to do him much harm, the flames would not have extended so far and we should not now find ourselves in the distressing present state of things.”[739] The moderation with which the champion of free-will wrote, was commended even by Melanchthon in a letter to Erasmus (“perplacuit tua moderatio”).[740] With this, other critics, Martin Lipsius for instance, agreed.[741]

Luther was forced unwillingly to admit the kindness displayed by Erasmus, but the fact that the keen intellect of his opponent should have singled out for animadversion the most vital point of his teaching, as he termed it, was very bitter to him. The question dealt with, he said, certainly constituted the central point of the quarrel; it is absolutely essential that we should know what and how much we are capable of in our relations to God, otherwise we remain ignorant of God’s work, nay, of God Himself, and are unable to honour, to thank, or to serve Him.[742] Luther accordingly admitted, concerning Erasmus’s work—and this he was in his own way anxious to see regarded as it deserved—that the author, unlike his previous opponents, “had seized upon the real question at issue, the ‘summa causæ’”; he had not scolded him on the Papacy, indulgences and similar subjects, but had hit upon the cardinal point, and held the knife at his (Luther’s) throat. God had not, however, yet bestowed upon Erasmus the grace which would have fitted him to deal with the controversy. “God has not so willed nor given it; perhaps He may bestow it later and make this opponent capable of defending my doctrine more efficaciously than I can myself, seeing he is so far beyond me in all other things [especially in worldly learning].” These words, so remarkable from the psychological standpoint, are to be found in Luther’s reply.[743]

In his “Diatribe” Erasmus dwelt with emphasis and success on the fact that, according to Luther, not merely every good, but also every evil must be referred to God; this was in contradiction with the nature of God and was excluded by His holiness. According to Luther, God inflicted eternal damnation on sinners, whereas they, in so far as they were not free agents, could not be held responsible for their sins; what Luther had advanced demanded that God should act contrary to His eternal Goodness and Mercy; it would also follow that earthly laws and penalties were superfluous, because without free-will no one could be responsible; finally, the doctrine involved the overthrow of the whole moral order.

The scriptural passages bearing on the question, more particularly those appealed to by Luther in his “Assertio,” are examined with philological exactitude and with sobriety.

“Erasmus, in defending free-will,” writes A. Taube, a Protestant theologian, “fights for responsibility, duty, guilt and repentance, ideas which are essential to Christian piety. He vindicates the capacity of the natural man for salvation, without which the identity between the old and the new man cannot be maintained, and without which the new life imparted by God’s grace ceases to be a result of moral effort and becomes rather the last term of a magical process. He combats the fatalism which is incompatible with Christian piety and which Luther contrived to avoid only by his want of logic: he vindicates the moral character of the Christian religion, to which, from the standpoint of Luther’s theology, it was impossible to do justice.”[744]

The work of Erasmus reached Wittenberg in September, 1524. Luther treated it with contempt and ostentatiously repudiated it. He wrote to Spalatin, on November 1, that it disgusted him; he had been able to read only two pages of it; it was tedious to him to reply to so unlearned a book by so learned a man.[745] All the same, he did write a lengthy and detailed answer; that he delayed doing so until late in the following year is to be accounted for by the Peasant-War with its terrors, which entirely engrossed his attention; it was also the year of his marriage. In estimating the value of the reply, upon which he then set to work with great energy, we must bear in mind the state of the author and the inward and outward experiences through which he had just gone. The impression made on his mind by the events of those days has left its stamp in the even more than usually extreme utterances contained in his reply to Erasmus. When once he had begun the work he carried it to its end with a rush; he himself admits that it was composed in excessive haste. We also know to whose influence his final decision to take the work in hand was due, viz. to Catherine Bora. “It was only at her request” that he undertook the work, when she pointed out to him, “that his foes might see in his obstinate silence an admission of defeat.”[746]

Luther’s Book “On the Enslaved Will” against Erasmus

The title “De servo arbitrio,” “On the enslaved will,” was borrowed by Luther from a misunderstood saying of St. Augustine’s.[747] While the book which bears it was still in the press his friend Jonas commenced a German version and entitled it: “Dass der freie Wille nichts sei.”[748]

However grotesque and exaggerated some of the principal theses of the famous work, Luther was at pains to declare therein that they were the result of most careful deliberation and were not written in the heat of controversy. Hence, as a Protestant historian says, “we must not seek to hide or explain them away, as was soon done by Luther’s followers and has been attempted even in our own day.”[749] Another Protestant scholar, in the preface to his study on the work “De servo arbitrio,” remarks that “quite rightly it caused great scandal and wonder,” and goes on to point out that “the hard, offensive theory” which it champions was “no mere result of haste or of annoyance with Erasmus, coupled with the desire clearly to define his own position with regard to the latter,” but really “expresses the matured conviction of the Reformer.”[750]

In this lengthy, badly arranged and rather confused work we see, first, that Luther gives the widest limits to his denial of free-will and declares man to be absolutely devoid of freedom of choice, even in the performance of works not connected with salvation, and moral acts generally. He does, indeed, casually remark that man is free “in inferioribus,” and that the question is whether he also possesses free-will in respect of God (“an erga Deum habeat liberum arbitrium”).[751] “But it is doubtful whether we are to take Luther at his word.” For “as a matter of fact he shows clearly enough that he does not wish this limitation to be taken literally.”[752] “That his intentions are, on the contrary, of the most radical character, is plain from many other passages where he attacks free-will everywhere, and represents all that we do and everything that occurs (‘omnia quæ facimus et omnia quæ fiunt’), as taking place in accordance with inexorable necessity.”[753] He lays it down as a principle that God’s omnipotence excludes all choice on man’s part, and again supports this on an argument from the Divine omniscience; God from all eternity sees all things, even the most insignificant, by virtue of His prescience, hence they must happen. Even where God acts on man apart from the influence of grace (“citra gratiam spiritus”), according to Luther, it is He Who works all in all, as the Apostle says, “even in the impious.” “All that He has made, He moves, impels and urges forward (‘movet, agit, rapit’) with the force of His omnipotence which none can escape or alter; all must yield compliance and obedience according to the nature of the power conferred on them by God.”[754]

In the same way as he here speaks of a certain “power” in the creature, so also, in the same connection, he refers to “our co-operation” in the universal action of God (“et nos ei cooperaremur”). By this, however, he does not mean any real free co-operation but, as he says darkly, only an activity of the will corresponding to its nature and governed by law, “whether in submission to the universal omnipotence of God in matters which do not refer to His Kingdom, or under the special impulse of His Spirit [grace] within His Kingdom.”

Luther’s main object in the book “De servo arbitrio” is undoubtedly the vindication of religious determinism.

His denial of free-will had its root in his mistaken conviction that man was entirely passive in the matter of his salvation and in his attempt to destroy all personal merit, even that won by the help of grace, as at variance with the merit of Jesus Christ. He is fond of dwelling with emphasis on the absence of any co-operation on man’s part in his justification, which is effected by faith alone, and on the so-called “righteousness” which had been effected in man by God alone even previous to man’s choice. Even that free-will for doing what is good, which is given back to the man who is justified, does not strictly co-operate—lest the merit of Christ should suffer.

“This, then, is what we assert: Man neither does nor attempts anything whatever in preparation for his regeneration by justification or for the Kingdom of the Spirit, nor does he afterwards do or attempt anything in order to remain in this Kingdom, but both are the work of the Spirit in us, Who, without any effort on our part, creates us anew and preserves us in this state.... It is He Who preaches through us, Who takes pity upon the needy and comforts the sorrowful. But what part is there here for free-will to play? What is left for it to do?—Nothing, absolutely nothing.”[755]

Here we have a renewal of the attack on his old bugbear, self-righteousness, his dislike of which leads him to universal determinism; from his mechanical doctrine of faith alone it was merely a step to this mechanical view of everything.

We can only marvel at the ease with which, in his zeal for the supposed glory of the Saviour, he closes his eyes to the devastation which such teaching must work in the spiritual domain. He declares that he is not in the least afraid of the consequences. He fancies he has at last placed the whole motive force of human action in its true light and estimated it at its real value. For “it is above all else necessary and wholesome for the Christian to know that God foresees nothing conditionally, but that He knows all things beforehand unconditionally, determines them and carries them out by His unchangeable, eternal and infallible Will.”[756] He builds up piety, humility and all consolation on the basis of this abnegation of the will. “Christian faith,” he says, would be “altogether destroyed, God’s promises and the whole gospel would be trodden under foot were we not to believe in God’s indispensable foreknowledge and that all happens through necessity; on the other hand, the greatest and only consolation for Christians in the trials they encounter is to know, that God does not lie but invariably performs all things, that there is no resisting His will and no possibility of change or hindrance.”[757] Herein, according to him, lies “the only possibility of leading man to entire self-abnegation, and to perfect humility towards God.” Therefore “this truth must be proclaimed aloud, everywhere and at all times”; here, as in the service of the Word in general, any prosopolepsia, topolepsia, tropolepsia, or kœnolepsia is pernicious and damnable. The Protestant theologian from whom the last sentences are taken remarks: “We have here a peculiar form of piety, and it may remain an open question whether the same is to be judged pathologically or not.”[758]

Luther seems to ignore—if indeed he ever was acquainted with them—the reliable solutions to the problem of the Divine prescience and omnipotence in relation to human free-will, furnished both by philosophy and by theology from the times of the Fathers. He dismisses with utter contempt the distinctions and definitions of the greatest theologians of earlier ages.

On the other hand, he turns upon Erasmus and the theology of the Church with the formal charge: “You have denied God Himself by taking away faith in Him and fear of Him, you have shaken all God’s promises and menaces.” Without being clearly conscious of the fact, he is actually changing the true idea of God and seeking to set up a Being, who governs with the blind force of fate, in the stead of a God Who rules with wisdom, controlling His own power and restraining Himself with goodness and condescension.[759] Free-will, he says, belongs to God alone, Who alone is able to do what He wills in heaven and on earth.

How the ideas of free-will and of God are treated in Luther’s “De servo arbitrio” is made still more plain from the conclusions which he draws in this work from the denial of free-will, and deals with without the slightest reserve.

The first consequence is the absolute predestination of the reprobate to hell.

Luther here throws to the winds the will of God Almighty for the salvation of all men, and he does so, with regard to those who are delivered over to eternal death, with a precision which is quite shocking. They were incapable of being saved because God did not so will it. Owing to the reprobate, God has “an ‘æternum odium erga homines,’ not merely a hatred of the demerits and works of free-will, but a hatred which existed even before the world was made.”[760] Hence He inflicts eternal punishment upon those who do not deserve it (“immeritos damnat”).[761] And if sinners are thereby confirmed in their sins instead of being converted, this does not matter in the least, for the Spirit of God will nevertheless, in due season, lay hold of the elect and change them into children of God (“electi tamen manebunt”).[762]

The severity of his doctrine does not here differ in any way from Calvin’s cruel views, though, as the fact is less generally known, Luther’s name has not been so closely associated with predestination to hell as Calvin’s. Luther’s doctrine on this matter did not come so much to the front as that of Calvin, because, unlike the latter, he did not make capital out of it by means of popular and practical exhortations, and because the early Lutherans, under the influence of Melanchthon, who became an opponent of the rigid denial of free-will and of Luther’s views on predestination, soon came to soften their master’s hard sayings. Yet there can be no doubt that the book “De servo arbitrio” does contain such teaching quite definitely expressed.

The decree according to which God from all eternity condemns irrevocably to hell a great part of mankind, is, however, according to Luther, His “Secret Will” which we cannot investigate. With this His “Revealed Will” does not coincide. This distinction becomes a pet one of Luther’s, by means of which he fancies he can escape the embarrassment in which the many passages of the Bible concerning God’s desire that all men be saved, involve him. The “voluntas occulta et metuenda” of the “Deus maiestatis” determines man’s fate irrevocably; upon this we must not speculate, for it is beyond human investigation. We must, on the contrary, according to Luther, not go beyond the “voluntas Dei revelata”—which he also speaks of elsewhere as the “voluntas prædicata et oblata,” or “voluntas beneplaciti”—which, it is true, strives after the salvation of all men and the removal of sin.[763] “From this we must conclude that God, as He is preached, is not in every instance the same as He Who actually works, and that in some cases in His revelation He says what is quite untrue.”[764]

Thus the author is no longer content to place another meaning upon the biblical statements concerning God’s will that all men be saved, as he did in the “Assertio,”[765] though even in the “De servo arbitrio” he still “attempts to place a different interpretation upon the passages of Scripture in question and to explain away by a desperate exegesis God’s will for the salvation of the whole human race as expressed in the New Testament.” Hence he takes refuge in the “voluntas revelata,” which differs from the “occulta.” Should the former not agree with the latter and revelation declare that God wills, whereas the “voluntas secreta” really does not so will, then the passages of the revealed word “are a proof that God is raised above our code of morality.”[766] “The ‘voluntas occulta’ becomes entirely arbitrary.” The demand, Luther says, that God should act as we think right is tantamount to calling Him to account for being God. We must believe that He is just and good even when He transgresses the codes of Justinian and Aristotle. Is He, forsooth, only to condemn that man whom we think deserving of condemnation? Shall we look upon it as an absurdity, that He should condemn the man whose lot it is to be declared deserving of damnation? Shall we consider it wrong that He should harden whom He chooses to harden, and have mercy on whom He wills to have mercy?[767] From the standpoint that we must simply accept the “secreta maiestatis” even when apparently most unreasonable, he pours out his scorn on the efforts of the olden theologians to harmonise free-will with eternal election to grace.

His last word is that all we say of God is imperfect, inaccurate and altogether inadequate. As a matter of fact, however, as a Protestant critic already cited says,[768] “By the ‘voluntas occulta’ everything is called in question that Christian theology affirms concerning God on the authority of the gospel. Luther not only saw, but allowed, these consequences, yet as he was perfectly alive to the danger which they constituted, he is careful to warn people against going further into the question of the ‘Deus maiestatis.’ ‘Non est interrogandum, cur ita faciat, sed reverendus Deus, qui talia et possit et velit....’ Luther always held fast to the actuality and rights of the Secret Will. That he never forsook this standpoint even later, when the ‘voluntas beneplaciti’ alone was of interest to him, has been established by recent research. In his practice, however, we find but little trace of what was really an essential part of Luther’s theology.”

The same theologian is of opinion that the inconsistencies in which Luther at last finds himself entangled are the best refutation of his denial of free-will and the powers of the natural man.[769]

A second consequence of his teaching may also be pointed out here. From his theory of the enslaved will Luther was forced to deduce that God is responsible for evil.

“It is indeed an offence to sound common sense and to natural reason to hear that God is pleased to abandon men, to harden and to damn them, as though He—He, the All-Merciful, the All-Perfect—took delight in sin and torment. Who would not be horrified at this?... and yet we cannot get away from this, notwithstanding the many attempts that have been made to save the holiness of God.... Reason must always insist upon the compulsion God imposes on man.”[770]

According to Luther it is quite wrong to wish to judge of God’s secret, inscrutable action.[771] Fly, he repeats again and again, from these stumbling-blocks to faith. “Quærere non licet.”[772] Adore the hidden ruling. “Adorare decet.”[773]

It is true that the author, here as elsewhere, shows a certain reluctance to credit to God Himself the performance of what is evil; he prefers to speak of God’s action as though it merely supplied man, whose own inclination is towards what is evil, with the power and ability to act.[774] The same theory is to be met with in Calvin.[775] But, the critics in Luther’s own camp objected:[776] “This does not settle the question, Luther must go further.... He admits that, after all, God not only has a part in the origin of sin, since owing to His omnipotence He is the cause of all things (‘causa principalis omnium’), but even made Adam to sin.[777] And yet, precisely on account of the difficulty, faith will not relinquish it.” “Surely a ‘credo,’ not only ‘quamquam,’ but, ‘quia, absurdum.’”[778]

We may, in the third place, cast a glance at the ethical consequences of the theory.

Luther refuses to admit what all people naturally believe, viz. that if God gives commandments man must be able either to obey, or to disobey, and thus incur guilt. What he teaches is, that God has a right and reasons of His own to impose commandments even though there should be no free-will; since without Him we are unable to keep the commandments He gives them for the wise purpose of teaching us how little we are capable of. The law is intended to awaken in us a sense of indigence, a desire for redemption, and the consciousness of guilt. When once this is present, God’s power does the rest; but the groundwork of all salvation is that we should become conscious of our nothingness, for which reason the belief in the enslaved will is to be proclaimed everywhere as the supreme virtue.

“God,” he says, “has promised His grace first and foremost to the abandoned and to those who despair. Man cannot, however, be completely humbled so long as he is not conscious that his salvation is entirely beyond his own powers, plans and efforts, beyond both his will and his works, and depends solely upon the free choice, will and decree of another (‘ex alterius arbitrio, consilio, voluntate’).”[779]

Hence, instead of a moral responsibility for not keeping the commandments, all there is in man is a certain compunction for being unable to keep them. But this is surely very different from the consciousness of guilt. “Without free-will there is no guilt.” “Luther can no longer assert that guilt is incurred by the rejection of grace.” If a sense of guilt actually exists it cannot but be a subjective delusion, nor can it fail to be recognised as such as soon as we perceive the true state of the case, viz. that it is all due to delusive suggestion. “When Luther instances Adam’s fall as a proof of guilt, we can only see in this an admission of his perplexity. In this matter Luther’s theology—I mean Luther’s own theology—is altogether at fault.”[780]

The greatest stress is laid by the champion of the “enslaved will” on the alleged importance of this doctrine for the personal assurance of salvation.

It is this doctrine alone, he says, which can impart to timorous man the pacifying certainty that he will find a happy eternity at the hands of the Almighty, Who guides him; on the other hand, the assumption of free-will shows man a dangerous abyss, ever yawning, into which the abuse of his freedom threatens to plunge him. Better to trust to God than to our own free-will.

“Since God,” he writes, “has taken my salvation upon Himself and wills to save me, not by my own works but by His grace and mercy, I am certain and secure (‘securus et certus’) that no devil and no misfortune can tear me out of His hands.... This is how all the pious glory in their God.”[781]

With enthusiasm he describes this consciousness, carefully refraining, however, from looking at the other side, where perchance predestination to hell, even without free-will, may lie.[782] When it presses on him against his will he at once drowns the thought with the consoling words of St. Paul on the greatness of the inscrutable ways of God. His justice must indeed be unsearchable, otherwise there would be no faith, but in the light of eternal glory we shall realise what we cannot now understand.[783]

The not over-enthusiastic critic, whom we have frequently had occasion to quote, remarks: “Seeing that faith according to Luther is no act of our will, but a mere form given to it by God, ... Luther is right in saying, that the very slightest deviation from determinism is fatal to his whole position. His ‘fides’ is ‘fides specialissima.’” It is the assurance of personal salvation. But even though “combined with a courageous certainty of salvation, Luther’s views, taken as they stand, would still offer no consolation to the tempted, so that when Luther has to deal with such he is forced to put these views in the background.” The critic goes on to wonder: “How if the thought, which Luther himself is unable to overcome, should trouble a man and make him believe that he is of the number of those whom the ‘voluntas maiestatis’ wills to hand over to destruction?” His conclusion is: “The certainty of salvation, about which Luther is so anxious, cannot be reached by starting from his premises.”[784]

At the end of his “De servo arbitrio,” summing up all he had said, Luther appeals to God’s rule and to His unchangeable predestination of all things, even the most insignificant; likewise to the empire of the devil and his power over spirits. His words on this matter cannot be read without amazement.

“If we believe that Satan is the Prince of this world, who constantly attacks the Kingdom of Christ with all his might and never releases the human beings he has enslaved without being forced to do so by the power of the Spirit of God, then it is clear that there can be no free-will.”[785] Either God or Satan rules over men; to this pet thought he adds: “The matter stands simply thus ... when God is in us, the devil is absent and then we can will only what is good; but when God is not there, the devil is, and then we can will only what is evil. Neither God nor Satan leaves us with an indifferent will.”[786] “When the stronger of the two comes upon us,”[787] he says, “and makes a prey of us, snatching us away from our former ruler, we become servants and prisoners to such an extent that we desire and do gladly what he wills (‘ut velimus et faciamus libenter quæ ipse velit’). Thus the human will stands,” Luther continues, using a simile which has become famous, “like a saddle-horse between the two. If God mounts into the saddle, man wills and goes forward as God wills ... but if the devil is the horseman, then man wills and acts as the devil wills. He has no power to run to one or the other of the two riders and offer himself to him, but the riders fight to obtain possession of the animal.”[788]

With frightful boldness he declares this view to be the very core and basis of religion. Without this doctrine of the enslaved will, the supernatural character of Christianity cannot, so he says, be maintained; the work of redemption falls to the ground, because whoever sets up free-will cheats Christ of all His merit;[789] whoever advocates free-will brings death and Satan into the soul.[790]

In such passages we hear the real Luther, with all his presumptuous belief in himself: “To me the defence of this truth is a matter of supreme and eternal importance. I am convinced that life itself should be set at stake in order to preserve it. It must stand though the whole world be involved thereby in strife and tumult, nay, even fall into ruins and dissolve into nothing.”[791]

He ventures again to assert of Erasmus, that it had not been given him from above to feel, as he himself does, how in this great question “faith, conscience, salvation, the Word of God, the glory of Christ and even God Himself are involved.”[792] Concerning himself, on the other hand, he assures the reader that, with no earthly motives, he is waging a great war “with a God-given courage and steadfastness which his foes call obstinacy; that he holds fast to his cause in spite of so many dangers to his life, so much hatred, so many persecutions, in short, exposed as he is to the fury of man and of all the devils.”[793]

In various passages a lurid light is thrown on his inner state. In language which recalls the pseudo-mysticism of his Commentary on Romans ten years earlier, he says, that the predestination to hell which he advocated was certainly terrifying, that he himself had frequently taken great offence at it and had been brought to the abyss of despair, so that he wished he had never been born; but then “he saw how wholesome was this despair and how near to grace.”[794] “For whoever is convinced that all things depend on God’s Will, in his despair of self avoids making any choice and simply waits for God to act; such a one is near to grace and to finding salvation.” He himself “attributes nothing to himself, hopes for nothing and desires nothing” for his salvation; in thus waiting on the action of God’s grace he is very nigh to salvation, though he is as it were dead, stifled by the consciousness of guilt, and spiritually buried in hell; “whoever has read our works will be familiar with all this.”[795]

The echo of the pseudo-mystical ideas in which he had formerly steeped himself is plainly discernible in these words which go to form one of the most remarkable of the pictures he has left us of his state.

Even the “self-righteous,” whom he had at one time so bitterly assailed, again rise from their graves. The admission of free-will, he tells them, destroys all inward peace. After every work performed, the question still rankles: “Is it pleasing to God, or does God require something more? This is attested by the experience of all self-righteous (iustitiarii), and I myself, to my cost, was familiar with it for many long years.”[796]

On the same page he gives us a glimpse of the psychological source whence his whole theory of the enslaved will springs. The doctrine was born of personal motives and fashioned to suit his own state of soul. None the less, he insists that it must also become the common property of all the faithful which none can do without, nay, the very basis of the new Christianity. “Without this doctrine I should believe it necessary to plague myself with uncertainty and to beat the air with hopeless efforts, even were there no perils for the soul, no tribulations and no devils. Though I should live and work for all eternity, my conscience would never attain to a real peace and be able to say to itself, you have done enough for God.” He goes so far as to say: “For myself I admit, that, were free-will offered me, I should not care to have it; I should not wish to see anything placed within my power by means of which I might work for my salvation, because I should never be able to withstand and endure the trials and dangers of life and the assaults of so many devils.”[797]

The last words of the book even exceed the rest in confidence, and the audacity of his demand that his work should be accepted without question almost takes away one’s breath: “In this book I have not merely theorised; I have set up definite propositions, and these I shall defend; no one will I permit to pass judgment on them, and I advise all to submit to them. May the Lord Whose cause is here vindicated,” he says, addressing himself to Erasmus, “give you light to make of you a vessel to His honour and glory. Amen.”[798]

The great importance of the work “De servo arbitrio” for a knowledge of the religious psychology of its author may warrant a description of some of its other psychological aspects, and first of the connection discernible between the denial of free-will and Luther’s so-called inward experiences, which were supposed to be behind his whole enterprise.

He always believed he was following the irresistible pull of grace, and that he was merely treading the path appointed to him from above. In this work he breaks out into a loud hymn in praise of the irresistibility of the Divine action. “All that I have done,” he exclaims, “was not the result of my own will; this God knows, and the world, too, should have known it long ago. Hence, what I am and by what spirit and council I was drawn into the controversy is God’s business.”[799] In this explanation, so typical of his character and way of thinking, is summed up his reply to that argument of Erasmus against his doctrine, particularly of free-will, where the latter had confronted him with the teaching of the whole of the Church’s past.

For more than ten years, Luther adds, he had to listen to the reproach of his conscience: How dare you venture to overthrow the ancient teaching of all men and of the Church, which has been confirmed by saints, martyrs and miracles? “I do not think anyone has ever had to fight with this objection as I had. Even to me it seemed incredible that this impregnable stronghold which had so long withstood the storms, should fall. I adjure God, and swear by my very soul, that, had I not been driven, had I not been forced by my own insight and the evidence of things, my resistance would not have ceased even to this day.” But, under the higher impulse, he had suffered authorities ancient and modern to pass like a flood over his head that God’s grace might alone be exalted. “Since this is my only object, the spirit of the olden saints and martyrs and their wonder-working power witness in my favour.” The utter rigidity of his doctrine and line of thought, and the connection between his present attack on freedom and his own ostensible unfreedom in God’s hands could hardly be placed in a clearer light than here in Luther’s reply to the argument of Erasmus.

In another passage he describes, perhaps unconsciously, his experiences with his own will, so inclined to contradiction and anger; he says: That the will is not free is evident from the fact that, “it becomes the more provoked the greater the opposition it encounters....[800] Whoever pursues an object passionately is not open to correction, as experience shows. If he gives way, this is not willingly, but under pressure, and because it serves his purpose. It is only the man who has no interest whatever who allows things to take their own course.”[801]

From time to time the several pet ideas which had played a part in his previous development are harnessed to his argument and made to prove the servitude of the will.

We are conscious, he says, that, pressed down to the earth by concupiscence, we do not act as we should; hence man is not free to do what is good. The “sting” of this inability remains, as experience teaches, in spite of all theological distinctions. Natural reason, which groans so loudly under it and seeks to resist God’s action, would prove it even were it not taught in Holy Scripture. But Paul, throughout the whole of his Epistle to the Romans, while vindicating grace, teaches that we are incapable of anything, even when we fancy we are doing what is good.[802]

And further, the desire of gaining merit for heaven—the supposed error which he opposed quite early in his career owing to his distaste for works generally—can only be finally vanquished when the idol of free-will is overthrown. Then, too, he says, the fear of undeserved damnation by God also vanishes; for if there be no merit for heaven, then neither can there be any for hell; accordingly we may say without hesitation what must otherwise be repellent to every mind, viz. that God condemns to hell although man has not deserved it (“immeritos damnat”);[803] this is the highest degree of faith, to hold fast to the belief that “God is righteous when of His own will He makes us of necessity to be worthy of damnation (‘necessario damnabiles facit’), so that He would seem, as Erasmus says, to take delight in the torments of the damned and be more worthy of hatred than of love.”[804]

Here another element of his earlier development and mental trend comes into view, viz. a disregard for the rights of reason, based ostensibly on the rights of faith.

The denial of free-will seems to him in this regard quite attractive—such at least is the impression conveyed. For, when we deny the freedom of the will, so much becomes contradictory and mysterious to our reason. But so much the better! “Reason speaks nothing but madness and foolishness, especially concerning holy things.”[805] “Faith,” so he declares at great length, “has to do with things that do not appear (Heb. xi. 1); in order that true faith may enter in, everything that is to be believed must be wrapped in darkness. But things cannot be more completely concealed than when what is seemingly contradictory is presented to the mind, to the senses and to experience.”[806] In the present case, according to Luther, the apparent injustice of God in the “seemingly unjust” punishment of sinners, who are not free agents, is a grand motive for faith in His Justice.[807] Luther here displays his love of paradox. Even more than in his other writings plentiful opportunity for paradox presents itself in the “De servo arbitrio,” and of it he makes full use. “God makes alive by putting to death,” he writes in the passage under consideration, “He renders guilty and thereby justifies; He drags down the soul to hell and thereby raises it to heaven.”

Among the forcible expressions by which, here as elsewhere, he attempts to convince both himself and others, that he is in the right, are the following: “Liberty of choice is a downright lie (‘merum mendacium’).”[808] “Whoever assigns free-will to man, thereby makes him Divine, and thus commits the worst form of sacrilege.”[809] “To get rid altogether of the term free-will would be the best and most pious work (‘tutissimum et religiosissimum’).”[810] Whoever follows the road of Erasmus “is rearing within himself a Lucian—or a hog of the breed of Epicurus.”[811] “Erasmus concedes even more to free-will than all the sophists hitherto.”[812] “He denies Christ more boldly than the Pelagians,”[813] and those who hold with him are “double-dyed Pelagians, who merely make a pretence of being their opponents.”[814] But he himself, Luther, had never fallen so low as to defend free-will: “I have always, up to this very hour, advocated in my writings the theory that free-will is a mere name.”[815]

In this last assertion he repudiates his Catholic days and refuses even to take into account the works dating from that time; in his Commentary on the Psalms he had expressly admitted free-will for doing what is good and for the choice in the matter of personal salvation; it is true, however, that he never published this work. But in many of the writings composed and published even after his apostasy he had clearly assumed free-will in man and made it the basis of his practical exhortations, as shown above (p. 239). Now, however, he prefers to forget all such admissions.[816]

On the other hand he pretends to recall that in his Catholic days, “Christ had been represented as a terrible judge, Who must be placated by the intercession of His mother and the saints; that the many works, ceremonies, Religious Orders and vows were invented to propitiate Christ and to obtain His grace.”[817] Out of this is forged a fresh proof, drawn from his own experience, of the servitude of the will. For had Christ not been regarded exclusively as a judge, but as a “sweet mediator,” Who by His blood has redeemed all, then recourse would not have been had to the empty works of a self-righteous free-will. As it was, however, he had been made to feel strongly, that this delusion of works and free-will could only lead to despair.—Yet if, in his agony of soul, he really had sought and found peace of conscience in the theory of the enslaved will, how can we explain his many statements, made at almost that very time, concerning his enduring inward anguish and doubts?[818] The Protestant theologian, O. Scheel, the last to translate and expound the “De servo arbitrio,” says of the comfort that Luther professed to have derived from the absence of free-will and from the theory of predestination, that “in the Reformer’s piety a tendency is discernible which militates against the supposed whole-hearted and settled confidence of his faith in the redemption.”[819]

Contradictions formed an integral part of Luther’s psychology. Long pages of this work are full of them, though Luther seems quite unaware of his inconsistencies, obscurities and confusion. Conflicting lines of thought may be traced, similar to those which appeared in the Commentary on Romans (vol. i., p. 256), while the author was still a young man. They indicate a mentality singularly deficient in exactitude and clearness. The workshop where his ideas were fashioned was assuredly not an orderly one.

In the first place the main contention is very involved, while the statements that the will of the man who does what is evil is moved by God seem conflicting. The “movet, agit, rapit” in which the action of God on the will usually consists, does not here assert its sway; the Divine Omnipotence, which, as a rule, is the cause of all action, interferes here, either not at all, or at least less strongly than usual—God must not be made the direct author of sin. This illogical twisting of his theory is particularly noticeable where great sins of mighty consequence are in question. Is God to be regarded as having caused the Fall of Adam and the treason of Judas? Luther certainly does not answer this question in the affirmative so categorically as Melanchthon in his “Loci theologici.”[820] Here he carefully avoids speaking of an irresistible impulse of the will given by God; for the time being we seem to lose sight altogether of God’s imperative and exclusive action.

In the case of the betrayal of Judas, as Scheel points out, Luther does not mention any necessity “which compelled Judas to act as he did”; Luther seems, at least in certain passages, to look on that act as necessary, only because, having been foreseen by God, it “inevitably occurs at the time appointed.”[821] Yet elsewhere he says: “His will [that of the traitor] was the work of God; God by His Almighty Power moved his will as He does all that is in the world.”[822]

A similar confusion is apparent in his statements concerning Adam’s Fall. Adam was not impelled to his sin, but the Spirit of God forsook him, and intentionally placed him in a position in which he could not do otherwise than fall—even though his will was as yet free and though as yet he felt no attraction towards evil as the result of original sin. May we then say after all that God brought about the Fall and was Himself the cause of the depravity of the whole human race through original sin? To this question, which Luther himself raises, the only answer he gives is: “He is God; of His willing there is no cause or reason,” because no creature is above Him and He Himself “is the rule of all things.”[823] Because He wills a thing, it is good, “not because He must or ought so to will.” In the case of the creature it is otherwise; “His will must have reason and cause, not so, however, the will of the Creator.”[824] What seems to follow from these Occamistic subtleties is, that Adam’s sin was after all “brought about by God,”[825] and that Adam could not do otherwise than sin, even though God merely placed him in a position where sin was inevitable, but that he was nevertheless punished, and with him all his descendants. But is it so certain that in Adam’s case Luther excludes a real impulse, a real inner compulsion to transgress? The fact is that certain of his statements on this question present some difficulty. “Since God moves and does all, we must take it that He moves and acts even in Satan and in the godless.”[826] It is true, according to Luther, that He acts in them “as He finds them, i.e. since they are turned away from God and are wicked, and are carried away by the impulse of Divine Omnipotence (‘rapiuntur motu illo divinæ omnipotentiæ’), they do only what is contrary to God and evil.... He works what is evil in the wicked because the instrument, which is unable to withdraw itself from the impelling force of His might, is itself evil.”[827] If this means that the impulse on God’s part must in every case have an effect conformable to the condition of the instrument moved, then, in Adam’s case, its effect should surely have been good, inasmuch as Adam, being without original sin, was not inclined to evil by any passions. If then Adam fell we can only infer that the Almighty allowed an entirely different impulse from the ordinary one to take effect, one which led directly to the Fall. How, in that case, could God be exonerated from being the author of sin? Luther, unfortunately, was not in the habit of reconciling his conflicting thoughts. According to him there is nothing unreasonable in God’s punishing the first man so severely for no fault of his. Why? It is mere “malice on the part of the human heart” to boggle at the punishment of the innocent; it takes for granted the reward which, without any merit on their part, is the portion of the saved, and yet it dares to murmur when the matter is to its disadvantage and the reprobate too receive a reward without any desert on their part.[828] A reward is a reward, and the same standard should be applied freely in both cases.

It is scarcely comprehensible how, after such wanderings out of the right path and the exhibition of such mental confusion, Luther could proclaim so loudly the victory of his “servum arbitrium.” He describes his proof of the “unchanging, eternal and infallible will by which God foresees, orders and carries out all things” as a “thunderbolt” launched against the Erasmic and Popish heresy.

Even the editor of the Weimar edition of the “De servo arbitrio” is unable to refrain from remarking in connection with one such passage: “It cannot be denied that this mechanical conception of a God, Who is constantly at work, reeks strongly of pantheism.”[829] He also quotes the opinion of Kattenbusch: “Luther occasionally expresses his idea [of God’s constant action] very imperfectly.” “God becomes to a certain extent the slave of His own Power,” and all things “lose their resistance when in His presence.” “There is no doubt that the whole conception is strongly impregnated with pantheism.”[830] Kattenbusch says further: “Relying on such an argument, Luther could not fail to advocate the view that everything is determined by God, even what has no bearing on morality or religion.” Finally he concludes: “We were therefore right in refusing, as we did, to admit that Luther’s proposition: ‘Omnia necessario fiunt’ (p. 134 in the Erl. ed.) applied merely to the domain of morals, as Luther himself tries to make us believe.”[831] This subsequent explanation given by Luther is only a fresh proof of his mental confusion. Kattenbusch brings forward other evidences of the conflicting currents in Luther’s train of thought; for instance, in his conception of God and of destiny; into these we have, however, no time to enter.[832]

The theoretical weakness of Luther’s attack on free-will and its manifest bias in his own religious psychology caused the theologian O. Scheel to exclaim regretfully: “Luther impressed a deterministic stamp on the fundamental religious ideas which he put before the world.” Luther’s determinism was vainly repudiated as a “reformed heresy” by the later Protestants. It is true that Luther based his predestinarian sayings on his “personal experience of salvation, which he felt to have been a free gift,” but then his “religious state was not normal,” as Kattenbusch already had “rightly pointed out.” Luther’s doctrine of the distinction between the “Deus absconditus” and the “Deus revelatus” Scheel ascribes to a false conception of God,[833] though he is inclined to look with favour on Luther’s fatalism, finding therein “nothing irreligious,” but merely Luther’s lively “trust in God”; he even speaks of the “religious power and truth inherent in this idea.”[834]

Under another aspect the work exhibits, better than any other, the undeniable qualities of its writer, the elasticity of his mind, his humour and imagination, and his startling readiness to turn every circumstance to advantage; at the same time, undoubtedly because it was a case of breaking a lance with Erasmus, the style is more polished than usual and the language less abusive. The editor of the Weimar edition speaks of the book as the “most brilliant of Luther’s Latin polemics, nay, perhaps the most brilliant of all his controversial works.”[835]

Luther would not have committed this great work to writing had not his mind been full of the subject. How far calm deliberation had any place in the matter it is as hard to determine here, as it is in so many of his other productions, where feeling seems to hold the reins. It is likewise difficult to understand how Luther, in practice, managed to compromise with the ideas he expounds, more especially as he was the leader of a movement on the banner of which was inscribed, not the gloomy domination of fatalism, but the amelioration of religious conditions by means of moral effort in all directions. The contradiction between lack of freedom on the one hand, and practice and the general belief in free-will on the other, was a rock which he circumnavigated daily, thanks to his self-persuasion that the strands drawn by the Divine Omnipotence around the will were of such a nature as not to be perceptible and could therefore be ignored. We believe ourselves to be free, and do not feel any constraint because we surrender ourselves willingly to be guided to the right or to the left; this, however, is merely due to the exceptional fineness of the threads which set the machine in motion.

For an ennobling of human nature and of the Christian state such a system was certainly not adapted. A tragic fate ordained that the apostasy, of which the cause was ostensibly the deepening of religious life and feeling, should bear this bitter fruit. Freedom had been proclaimed for the examination of religious truth, and now, the “submission of every man” is categorically demanded to doctrines opposed to free-will and to the dignity of the Christian. Nevertheless, both then and later, even to the present day, this curious, assertive book, like the somewhat diffident one of Erasmus, to which it was a reply—both of them so characteristic of the mind of their authors—have drawn many to examine the spirit of that age and of its two spokesmen.[836]

In the work “De servo arbitrio,” Luther speaks of Laurentius Valla as one who had cherished similar views.[837] In his “Table-Talk” he praises his opinions on free-will and the simplicity which he cultivated both in piety and learning. “Laurentius Valla,” he says, “is the best ‘Wal’ [Italian] I have ever come across in my life.”[838] Opinions differ widely as to Valla’s views, which are expressed with enigmatical obscurity in his Dialogue “De libero arbitrio.” At a later date Erasmus took his part against Luther, rightly pointing out that Valla was seeking to explain popularly how it is that the Divine foreknowledge does not necessarily make all things happen without freedom and of necessity.[839] Valla was a Humanist and critic, but neither a theologian nor a philosopher. In the question at issue he left the decision to faith, but laid great stress on the objections raised by reason. According to a modern historian he did not deny free-will, but merely left the problem, “which he neither could nor would solve,” to the Omnipotence of God.[840]

Luther’s Later Dicta on the Enslaved Will and on Predestination

Luther always remained faithful to the position taken up in his great work “De servo arbitrio,” as to both the absence of freedom and predestination.

In the Disputations of which we have records, he frequently reverts to his denial of free-will.

In a Disputation of December 18, 1537, for the sake of debate the objection is advanced, that there is no purpose in making good resolutions owing to the will not being free: “Man,” says the opposer, “has no free-will, hence he can make no good resolutions, and sins of necessity whether he wishes to or not.” The professor’s reply runs: “Nego consequentiam. Man, it is true, cannot of himself alter his inclination to sin; he has this inclination and sins willingly, neither under compulsion nor unwillingly. Man’s will, not God, is the author of sin.”[841] On another occasion, on January 29, 1536, the objector refers to the opinions of great Churchmen of olden times, that some freedom of the will exists. The reply is: “What such men say is not to be accepted as gospel-truth; they often gave proof of weakness and stood in need of additional purification by the ‘remissio peccatorum.’ You youngsters must not get into the habit of deriding them, yet we esteem Holy Scripture more highly.”[842]—In the same year we read the following in the theses of the School: “It is godless philosophy, and censured by theology, to assert that ‘liberum arbitrium’ exists in man for the forming of a just judgment and a good intention, or that it is man’s business to choose between good and evil, life and death, etc. He who speaks thus does not know what man really is, and does not understand in the least what he is talking about.”[843]

Melanchthon, however, found urgent reasons in the growing immorality of the young men at the University and the sight of the evil results in the religious life of the people produced by the new doctrine of the will and good works to revise what he had said on free-will in his “Loci Theologici.” In the course of time he took up an altogether different standpoint, coming at last to acknowledge free-will and a certain co-operation with grace (“Synergismus”).[844] Luther, nevertheless, was loath to break with him on account of this divergence in doctrine; out of esteem for so indispensable a fellow-worker, he even recommended to his hearers the new edition of the “Loci” without a word about the corrections in question.

But Luther himself never surrendered his favourite idea in spite of his anxiety and horror at the effect his preaching produced on the people, who seized upon his theory of human helplessness and the sole action of grace as a pretext for moral indolence. In 1531 he was again to be heard stating—this time in a public sermon, a very unusual thing—that man lacks free-will. Here he connects this doctrine with the impossibility of “keeping the Commandments without the grace of the Spirit.” In Popery they indeed preached, as he himself had also done at one time, “quod homo habeat liberum arbitrium,” to keep the Commandments by means of his natural powers; but this was an error which had grown up even in the time of the Apostles.[845]—As a matter of fact, however, the Church did not teach that fallen man could, at all times, keep all the Commandments without grace.

When, in August, 1540, someone said to him: “People are merely getting worse through this preaching on grace,” he replied: “Still, grace must be preached because Christ has commanded it; and though it has been preached for a long time, yet at the hour of death the people know nothing about it; it is to the honour of God that grace should be preached; and, though we make the people worse, still God’s Word cannot be set aside. But we also teach the Ten Commandments faithfully, these must be insisted on frequently and in the right place.”[846] The Antinomians had just then attacked the preaching of the Decalogue on the pretext of Luther’s own doctrine regarding man’s incapacity.

In his “Table-Talk” Luther elsewhere declares it to be his “final opinion” that “whoever defends man’s free-will and says that it is capable of acting and co-operating in the very least degree in spiritual matters, has denied Christ.”[847] Absolute determinism, or the entire absence of free-will everywhere, is here no longer expressed. “I admit,” he says, “that you have free-will for milking the cows, for building a house, etc., but not for anything further.”[848] Of spiritual things, however, he says: “Man’s free-will does not work or do anything towards his conversion ... but merely suffers and is the material upon which the Holy Ghost works, as the potter fashions the pot out of the clay, doing this even in those who resist and are unruly like Paul. But after the Holy Ghost has worked on such a rebellious will, He renders it pliable so that it wills as He does.”[849] The example of those “whose bodies are possessed by the devil, who rends them and drags them about, rides and drives them,” he continues, shows how little “man’s will can do” for his conversion.[850]—Johann Aurifaber (1566), the old editor of the “Table-Talk,” says of Luther’s statement, referred to above, concerning his “final opinion”: “There you see, dear Christian brother, that it is a lie what some say and give out, more particularly the Synergists, viz.: that the dear Man of God modified in any way his opinion on free-will, which they term hard because it is directly opposed to their heresy. And yet they boast of being Luther’s disciples!”[851]

In his own mind Luther practically denied his doctrine as often as he struggled with remorse, or sought to overcome his terrors of conscience. Few men have had to exert their will with such energy (as we shall have occasion to point out later, vol. v., xxxii.) to hold their own against inward unrest. He, the advocate of the servitude of the will, in his struggles with himself and his better feelings, made his soul the battlefield of free-will, i.e. of a will vindicating its freedom.

From his artificial position of security he ventures to stand up vigorously against others, great men even, who “abused” his doctrine. Count Albert of Mansfeld was one of those who, according to Luther’s account, said of predestination and the helplessness of the will: “The Gospel? What is predestined must come to pass. Let us then do as we please. If we are to be saved, we shall be saved,” etc. Luther, therefore, takes him to account in a letter addressed to him on December 8, 1542. He tells him that he intends to speak freely, being himself “a native of the county of Mansfeld.” “He, too, had been tormented with such thoughts or temptations” and had thus been in danger of hell. “For in the case of silly souls such devilish thoughts breed despair and cause them to distrust God’s grace; in the case of brave people, they make them contemners and enemies of God, who say: let me alone, I shall do as I please, for in any case all I do is to no purpose.” He does not forbear to scold the Count for his behaviour, for “withdrawing himself from the Word and the Sacrament,” for “growing cold and set upon Mammon.” In the end he is, however, only able to give him the following questionable consolation concerning his doctrine. “It is perfectly true that what God has determined must certainly take place,” but there is “a great distinction to be observed” between the revealed and the secret will of God. He should not “trouble himself much” about the latter; for those who do soon “come to care nothing for the Word of God or the Sacrament, give themselves up to a wild life, to Mammon, tyranny and everything evil; for, owing to such thoughts, they can have no faith, hope or charity for either God or man.” Instead of this he desires, as he had explained in his book against Erasmus, that we should simply cling to the God Who has revealed Himself; “what He has promised we must believe, and what He has commanded we must do.” A servant, for instance, does not presume to seek out “the secret thoughts” of his master before obeying him. “Has not God the same right to secret knowledge of His own beyond what He chooses to tell us?” Some say: If it is to be, then all will happen in any case according to God’s will; “of what use, then, is baptism, Holy Scripture and every other creature to us? If God wills it, He can surely do it without all that.”[852]

At that time the report of such frivolous talk among the great ones led him to broach the subject in the lectures on Genesis which he happened to be delivering.[853] Here, if we may trust the reporter, he reverts to the doctrine he had defended in his “De servo arbitrio,” viz. that all things happen of entire necessity (“esse omnia absoluta et necessaria”).[854] He retracts nothing, but merely says, that he had emphasised the necessity of paying attention only to the revealed God; in this artifice he finds a means of preventing any frivolous abuse of the theory of predestination, any despair or recourse to the complaint “I cannot believe.”

In another letter he gives encouragement, no less doubtful in character, to an unknown person, who, in the anxiety caused by his apprehension of being predestined to hell, had applied to him. Luther boldly re-affirms the existence of such absolute predestination: “God rejected a number of men and elected and predestined others to everlasting life before the foundation of the world, such is the truth.” “He whom He has rejected cannot be saved, even though he should perform all the works of the Saints; such is the irrevocable nature of the Divine sentence. But do you gaze only upon the Majesty of the Lord Who elects, that you may attain to salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” In Christ, he proceeds, we have that revealed Majesty of God, Who wills to save all who believe in Christ; “whom He has predestined to salvation, He has also called by the gospel, that he may believe and be justified by faith.”[855]—Yet, strangely enough, this letter also contains a sentence which denies absolute predestination to hell, the only such denial known to have been made by Luther.[856] The text of the letter has, however, not yet been verified critically. The words in question appear to be a quotation from Augustine added by another hand in extenuation of Luther’s doctrine.

Although Luther did not put forth his rigid doctrine of predestination to hell either in his popular or strictly theological writings, yet, to the end of his life, he never surrendered it; that he “never retracted it” is emphasised even in Köstlin and Kawerau’s Life of Luther.[857]

Of his book against Erasmus Luther spoke long after as the only one, save the Catechism, which he would be sorry to see perish.[858] In reply to the question put by Caspar Aquila, a preacher, why so many who heard the Word did not believe, he refused to ascribe this to free-will, and as regards the temptations to despair, which the same enquirer complained were the result of his thoughts on predestination, Luther insisted, that God had not chosen to reveal His secret will (“maiestas lucis illius occultata et non significata est”), hence the need to turn away resolutely from such thoughts and to defy this “greatest of all temptations, truly a devilish one.” He refuses to withdraw even the proposition, that all things happen of necessity.[859] In his later years he is fond of speaking of the power of sin over man’s interior, and though he does not allude so decidedly or so frequently to man’s “absolute and entire dependence upon God’s Omnipotence,” yet he has by no means relinquished the idea. Thus the “difference between his earlier and later years” is one only of degree, i.e. he merely succeeded in keeping his theory more in the background.[860]

The controversy with Erasmus did not cease with the appearance of Luther’s book, on the contrary. Apart from the question itself, the injustice done to the eminent scholar, and still more to the Church, by the arrant perversion of his opponent’s words to which Luther descended in order to stamp him and the Catholic doctrine of the past as altogether un-Christian, could not be allowed to pass unchallenged. It has been admitted, even by Protestants, as Luther’s constant policy in this work to make Erasmus say, that, in order to arrive at salvation it was sufficient to use free-will and that grace was unnecessary, and then to conclude that the Holy Ghost and Christ were shamefully set aside by Catholics. This Luther did (as Kattenbusch says) “by a certain, of course bona fide, perversion of his [Erasmus’s] words, or by a process of forced reasoning which can seldom, if indeed ever, be regarded as justified.”[861]

4. New Views on the Secular Authorities

“Since the time of the Apostles no doctor or scribe, no theologian or jurist has confirmed, instructed and comforted the consciences of the secular Estates so well and lucidly as I have done.”[862]

“Even had I, Dr. Martin, taught or done no other good, save to enlighten and instruct the secular government and authorities, yet for this cause alone they ought to be thankful to and well-disposed towards me, for they all of them, even my worst enemies, know that in Popery such understanding of the secular power was not merely discountenanced, but actually trampled under foot by the stinking, lousy priests, monks and mendicant friars.”[863]

“In Popery,” as hundreds of documents attest, the people were taught, as they always had been, that the secular government was divinely appointed and altogether independent in its own sphere;[864] that it was nevertheless to govern according to the dictates of law and justice; that, far from neglecting it, it was to promote the eternal welfare of the subject; finally, that it was bound to recognise the Catholic Church as the supreme guardian, of both the natural and religious law. Government and secular Estate could work in all freedom and prosperity. All that Luther taught rightly concerning the secular power had been proclaimed long before by the voice of the Church and put into practice.[865] As to the new and peculiar doctrines he taught in the first period of his career, they must now be examined.

A curious changeableness and want of logic are apparent, not merely in his way of expressing himself, but also in his views. This was due in part to the fact that his mental abilities lent themselves less to the statement and defence of general theories than to controversy on individual points, but still more to the influence on his doctrine exercised by the changes proceeding in the outer world.

The main point with him in the matter of the secular authorities was, whether they might demand obedience from him and his followers in matters concerning the new doctrine, i.e. whether they might compel them to forsake the innovations, or whether the Lutheran party had the right to resist the authorities and the Emperor, even by the use of force. Another question was whether Catholics could be left free to practise their religion in localities where the authorities were on Luther’s side. Were the authorities bound to respect Catholic convictions, or had the Lutheran Prince or magistrate the right to force the refractory to accept the innovations? Finally, Luther’s relations with those parties within the new faith who differed from him raised fresh questions: Were the evangelical authorities to tolerate these sectarians, or were they to repress any deviation from the Wittenberg doctrine?

To formulate any definite answers to such questions was rendered still more difficult in Luther’s case by the fact that prudence compelled him to exercise great reticence and caution in his utterances on many such points.[866] On the one hand he might easily have spoilt his whole work in the eyes of his cautious sovereign had he proclaimed openly the right of his friends among the nobles to resist the Emperor even by force. On the other, many would have been repelled had he laid down the principle of intolerance towards Zwinglians and Anabaptists as strongly at the commencement as he did later. In considering his doctrine concerning the secular authorities and the obedience due to them, we must simply take his utterances in their historical sequence, at the same time keeping a watchful eye on his actual behaviour in which we shall find at once their explanation and justification.[867] Only in this way shall we arrive at a clear estimation of his tangled ideas on secular authority and religious toleration.[868]

As to his varying theories,[869] at the outset and during the first stage of his revolt against the Church, Luther was fond of launching out into very questionable and far-reaching statements concerning the secular authority, as appears, for instance, in his tract addressed in 1520 to the German Nobility. Where the authorities are on the side of the Evangel, their power is so great that they may exercise their office “unhindered,” “even against Pope, bishop, parson, monk or nun or whatever else there be”; in that case, too, the secular authorities are perfectly justified in summoning clerics to answer before their tribunal.[870] “St. Paul says to all Christians,” Luther argues, “‘Let every soul’—hence, I suppose, even the Pope himself—‘be subject to higher powers, for they bear not the sword in vain.’ ... St. Peter, too, foretold that men would arise who would despise the temporal rulers, which has indeed come to pass through the rights of the clergy.”[871] In such wise does he charge the past.

But now, he continues (owing to his efforts), “the secular power has become a member of the ghostly body, and, though its office is temporal, yet it has been raised to a spiritual dignity; its work may now be done freely and unhindered among all the members of the whole body, punishing and compelling, where guilt deserves it or necessity demands, regardless of Pope, bishop or priest, let them threaten and ban as they please.”[872] It is clear how the interests of the “reformation” he has planned impel him to extend the rights of the secular power, even in the spiritual domain, over all who resist.

In his work “On the secular power,” of March, 1523, we find an entirely different language.

Here he insists with great emphasis on the fact that the secular authorities have no right to interfere in the spiritual domain. The explanation of his change of attitude is that here he is thinking of the Catholic authorities who were placing obstacles in the way of the spread of the Lutheran apostasy. His teaching is: The secular power exists and is ordained by God, but it has no concern with spiritual matters, may not place difficulties in the way of the preaching of the “Word,” and has no right to curtail the interests of the Evangel, by prohibiting Luther’s books, by threatening excommunication, or by hindering the new worship. He thus sets up general principles which are quite at variance with the line of action he himself constantly pursued where the authorities were favourable to his cause.

His teaching he expounds in this way: Temporal rulers are, it is true, established in the world by the will of God and must be obeyed; but their sword must not invade a domain which does not belong to them; it is not their business to render men pious, and they have nothing whatever to do with the good, their only object being to prevent outward crimes and to maintain outward peace as “God’s task-masters and executioners.”[873] He speaks almost as though there were two kingdoms of men, one, of the wicked and those who are not “Christians,” coming under the rule of the authorities and belonging to the kingdom of the world; the other, the kingdom of God, whose members are not subject to earthly laws and authorities; such are “all true believers in and beneath Christ.”

Not only could this curious dualism be objected to on the score of want of clearness, but the assertion that the secular power was merely an “executioner” for the punishment of outward crime actually tended to abase and degrade it. The olden Church had, on the contrary, exalted the secular power by permitting its representatives to share in many ways in the spiritual work of the Church, and by desiderating the harmonious co-operation of the two powers, spiritual and secular, in the interests of the ultimate end of mankind.

The singular attitude adopted by Luther is to be explained, as hinted above, by the fact that, in his work “On the secular power,” he has allowed himself to be so largely influenced by polemical regard for the Catholic authorities, whom he describes as those blind, wretched people, the Emperor and the wise Princes and tyrants generally. He inveighs against the “clever squires who seek to uproot heresy,” and against “our Christian Princes, who defend the faith.” The authorities with whom he is here concerned consist almost exclusively of persons who, “instead of allowing God’s Word to have free course,” would fain impose by compulsion the faith of bygone days upon their subjects, thus creating “liars by constraint.” They “command men to feel with the Pope,” but they act “without the clear Word of God” and must therefore necessarily perish in their “perverted understanding.”[874]

In the work in question he nevertheless seeks to establish a general theory, though, partly owing to its being forcibly shaped to meet the special needs of the case, partly because it was based on a certain kind of pseudo-mysticism, the theory remains open to many objections.

The secular power (more particularly where it is Catholic) cannot exercise any authority in spiritual matters, hence, he says, “these two governments must be carefully kept asunder, and both be preserved, the one to render men pious, the other to safeguard outward peace and prevent evil deeds.”[875] In speaking as he does here and elsewhere in this work of the “two governments” he is, however, very far from acknowledging an independent ecclesiastical or spiritual government such as had existed in Catholicism. What he called spiritual government was “without law or command,” and merely “the inward sovereignty of the Word,” “Christ’s spiritual dominion” where souls are ruled by the Evangel; there the Word of God is furthered by teaching and the sacraments, by which minds are led and heresy vanquished; “for Christians must be ruled by faith, not by outward works.... Those who do not believe are not Christians and do not belong to Christ’s kingdom, but to the kingdom of the world, and must therefore be compelled and governed by the sword.” “Christians do all what is good without compulsion and God’s Word suffices them.”[876]—Hence it is certain that he does not look upon this kingdom of the Christian as a real government, seeing that it implies no jurisdiction. The power to make and enforce laws in this world belongs only to the secular authorities. They alone form on earth a real government. “Priests and bishops,” too, have neither “supremacy nor power.”[877]

True believers are subject to “no laws and no sword,”[878] for they stand in need of none. For this reason Christ commands us not to make use of the sword and to refrain from violence. “The words of Christ are clear and peremptory: ‘resist not evil’” (Matt. v. 39). These words and the whole passage concerning the blow on the cheek, the Sophists (i.e. the Schoolmen) had indeed interpreted as a mere “counsel.” In reality, however, they constitute a command, though only for “Christians”; “the sword has no place among Christians, hence you cannot use it upon or among Christians, since they need it not.”[879] He is here addressing Duke Johann, the Elector’s brother, who sympathised with his cause and to whom, in the Preface, the work is dedicated. He goes on to tell him that the Christian ruler nevertheless must not lay aside the sword on account of what has just been said, for in point of fact there are few such “Christians,” wherefore the sword was still “useful and necessary everywhere.” “The world cannot and will not do without” authority. Even with the sword you still remain “true to the gospel,” he tells this Christian Prince, and still hold fast to Christ’s Word, “so that you would gladly offer the other cheek to the smiter and give up your cloak after your coat, if the matter affected yourself or your cause.”[880] Every Christian likewise must comply with the command to relinquish his rights, “allow himself to be insulted and disgraced,” but in his neighbour’s cause he must insist upon what is just, even to having recourse to the sword of authority.[881]

In this way he fancies, as he says in the Dedication, that he is the first to instruct “the Princes and secular authorities to remain Christians with Christ as their Lord, and yet not to make mere counsels out of Christ’s commands”; but the “Sophists” “have made a liar of Christ and placed Him in the wrong in order that the Princes may be honoured.... Their poisonous error has made its way throughout the world, so that everyone looks upon Christ’s teaching as counsels for the perfect and not as obligatory commands, binding on all.”

Should the secular power exceed its limits and the rulers demand what is against conscience, then God is to be obeyed rather than man.[882] He now comes to the new Evangel. If the authorities require you “to believe this or the other,” “or order you to put away certain books, you must reply, ... In this respect you are acting like tyrants; you are going too far and commanding where you have neither right nor power, etc. Should they thereupon seize your property and punish you for your disobedience, you should esteem yourself happy and thank God.”[883] In the County of Meissen, in Bavaria, and in the March, where the authorities required, under penalties, that his translation of the New Testament should be given up, he says, “the subjects are not to surrender a single leaflet, nor even a letter, if they do not wish to imperil their salvation, for whoever does such a thing, surrenders Christ into the hands of Herod.” They are, however, not to offer violent resistance, but to “suffer.”[884]

The Imperial Edicts issued against the innovations led him to speak more fully of the interference of the secular authorities on behalf of religious doctrine generally. “God,” he declares, “will permit none to rule over the soul but Himself alone.... Hence, when the secular power takes upon itself to make laws for the soul it is trespassing upon God’s domain and merely seducing and corrupting souls. We are determined to make this so plain that everyone can grasp it, and that our squires, Princes and bishops may see what fools they are when with laws and commandments they try to force the people to believe this or that.”[885] Such meddling of the authorities with matters which did not concern them was, so he says, due to the “commandments of men,” and was therefore utterly at variance with “God’s Word.” God would have “our faith founded only on His Divine Word,” but what the worldly authorities were after “was uncertain, or rather, certainly, displeasing [to God], because there was no clear Word of God in its favour.” “Such things are enjoined by the devil’s apostles, not by the Church, for the Church commands nothing save when she knows for certain that it is according to the Word of God.... As for them, they will find it a hard job to prove that the decrees of the Councils are the Word of God.”[886]

It is well worth our while to consider the following general grounds he assigns for his repudiation of all interference of the authorities in matters of faith, for, not long after, his position will be very different. He declares that, speaking generally, the authorities have “no power over souls”; the soul is removed altogether from the hands of men and “placed in the hands of God alone.” The ruler has just as little control over a soul as he has over the moon. “Who would not be accounted crazy who commanded the moon to shine at his pleasure?” Besides, Pope, Bishops and Schoolmen are “without God’s Word,” “and yet they wish to be termed Christian Princes, which may God prevent!” Further proofs follow from the Bible, where we read, that God alone knows and governs all things, and from the fact, that “every man’s salvation depends on his belief, and he must accordingly look to it that he believes aright”; “faith is a voluntary act to which no one can be forced, nay, it is a Divine work of the Spirit.” Moreover, “it is a vain and impossible thing” to compel the heart, and God will bring to a dreadful pass the purblind rulers who are now attempting it.[887]

His conclusion is that “the secular power must be content to wait and allow people to believe this or the other as they please and are able, and not to compel any man by force.”[888]

“Heresy can never be withstood by force,” he says further on. “Something else is needed.... God’s Word must here do the work, and if it fails, then the secular power will certainly not achieve it, though it should fill the world with blood.... God’s Word alone can be effective.” Hence the squires should learn at last to cease “destroying ‘heresy,’ and allow God’s Word which enlightens the heart” to have its way.[889]

Nevertheless, he admits that it is the right of the bishops to “restrain heretics.” “The bishops must do this, for it appertains to their office though not to the Princes”—a theory which Luther persistently refused to see carried to its logical conclusion. He also admits, that “no one has a right to command souls unless he knows how to show them the way to heaven,”—though here, again, he would have denied the consequence which Catholics gathered from this truth, when they urged that the measures adopted by the Empire against the innovations were for the safeguarding of the road to heaven, which an infallible Church points out to mankind. In Luther’s opinion there no longer existed any Church able to “point out the way to heaven” without danger of error. “This no man can do,” he exclaims in the same passage,[890] “but God alone.” It was hopeless for Catholics to argue that the Church did so only in God’s name, and under explicit promise of His assistance. Facts are there to prove that, at the very time when Luther was proclaiming his theories of religious toleration, he was setting them at nought in the most outrageous fashion where Catholics were concerned; he was, however, careful to veil his invitation to abolish their faith and worship under the specious pretext of demolishing abuses, sacrilege and the Kingdom of Antichrist. Nor was it long before he invoked the help of the secular power against sectarians within his own camp.

Where, towards the close of the work “On the secular power,” Luther passes on to show how Princes, who are “desirous of acting as Christian Princes and lords,” ought to administer their authority, he reaches a less controversial subject and is able to expound in that popular, imaginative language which he knew so well how to handle certain wholesome views which had already found expression in earlier times. In the forcible exhortations he here gives, rulers desirous of profiting might have found much to learn. Whoever wishes to be a Christian Prince must above all “lay aside the notion that he is to rule and govern by violence.” “Justice must reign at all times and in everything.” His whole mind must be set on “making himself of use and service to his subjects.” Secondly, “he must keep an eye on the Jacks-in-office and on his councillors, and behave towards them in such a way as not to despise any of them, while at the same time not confiding in any one man to such an extent as to leave everything to him.” “Thirdly, he must take care to deal rightly with evil-doers.” “He must not follow those advisers and fire-eaters who urge and tempt him to make war.” “Fourthly—what ought really to have been placed first— ... the ruler must behave towards his God as a Christian, submitting himself to Him with entire confidence, and praying for wisdom to rule well.”[891]

Concerning the latter point, viz. the attitude of the ruler towards God and towards religion, which, according to Luther, really should come first, the exhortations of earlier days addressed to the rulers, hardly ever failed to represent the protection of the Kingdom of God as the noblest task of any sovereign, who looked beyond temporal things to the world to come. Luther himself at a later period commends the protection and extension of the Kingdom of God most earnestly and eloquently to all rulers who followed the new faith, and instances the example of the Jewish Kings and Jewish priesthood.[892] Here, however, where he is full of other interests, we find not a word of the kind. On the subject of their relation to God, all he does is to remind the Princes in one sentence of the need of “true confidence and heartfelt prayer,” and, having done so, he breaks off and hurriedly brings the work to an end. In this circumstance, in itself insignificant, Luther’s violent breach with tradition is very apparent. Here, where, for the first time in any work of his, he puts forth his views as to what the conduct of secular authorities should be, in dealing with their relations to faith and worship, he has not a word in support of the recommendation to protect religion, albeit so justifiable and hitherto so usual; he could not give such a recommendation, because a few pages before he had laid it down that “the secular government has laws which do not extend beyond life and property and what is external on earth.” “The secular power must leave people free to believe this or that as they please”; “the blind, miserable wretches [the Catholic Princes] see not how vain and impossible a thing they are undertaking.”[893]—Nowhere in the writing, as a Protestant theological critic remarks, “does the idea appear that a Christian ruler has the right or the duty to pass beyond the limits of his temporal jurisdiction and to concern himself with ecclesiastical matters.”[894]

It is quite remarkable how Luther reduces the action of the secular power and the rights of the authorities to a judicial constraint to be exercised against evil-doers, or, as he says, to the task of a mere executioner.

For the explanation of these ideas on the secular power, two points are of especial importance: In the first place, Luther was at that time somewhat disappointed with the Princes and the nobles. In his work “To the Nobility” he had urged them to make an end of the Papal rule, and now he was vexed to see that, almost to a man, they had declined to do anything, whilst he himself was under the ban of the Empire. Secondly, it was his idea of the inward action of the Evangel upon souls and his conception of a sort of invisible Church, which induced him to exclude altogether the secular power from the spiritual domain, and to speak in exaggerated and disparaging terms of the “outward actions” with which alone it was concerned. In those years, when he was still to some extent under the influence of his early pseudo-mysticism, he was fond of picturing to himself the community of believers as an assembly of all those who had been awakened by “the Word,” and who, in spirit, were far above the compulsion of any earthly regulations. Thus, with him, the Church, in comparison with the political community, tended to evaporate into a mere union of souls, scarcely perceptible to earthly eyes.[895]

To us now it is clear that, in spite of every effort to the contrary, the new Church was bound in process of time to become entirely dependent on the secular power, first and foremost in its outward administration. Luther’s spiritual Church could not endure but for the support of the authorities.

It is notorious that the tendency to make his Church depend upon the secular authorities, as soon as they had embraced his cause, was part of Luther’s plan from the very outset. A State Church corresponded with his requirements. However much at the commencement Luther might emphasise the congregational ideal, tracing the whole authority of the freshly formed communities back to it, viz. to the priestly powers inherent in all the faithful, yet, as occasion arises, he falls back on the one external authority left standing, now that he has definitely set aside one of the two powers recognised of old.

In the sixteenth century the Church was confronted not only by official Protestantism, but by various other opposing bodies, Anabaptists, fanatics and anti-Trinitarians. If among all these only the Wittenberg, Zürich and Geneva groups “were able to assert themselves, this,” says a recent Protestant theologian, Paul Wernle, “was not due, or at least not solely due, to the fact, that they were more true or more profound than the others, but that they accommodated themselves better to existing conditions, and, above all, to the State.”[896] Karl Sell, a Protestant professor of theology, speaks in the same strain: “Where the Reformation gained the day it did so with the help of the secular power, of the Princes or republics and, in every instance, the Reformation itself strengthened the power of these authorities. Upon them devolved the new office of caring ... for religion.... Thus the duty of providing for wholesome doctrine and right faith, for the doctrine which alone could be pleasing to God, became one of the principal concerns of the rulers; hence arose the strict adherence to orthodoxy, the exclusion of erroneous teaching from the confines of the State, in short, the theological police system which prevailed in all Protestant countries till the middle of the seventeenth century.”[897]

The tendency to seek an alliance with the secular powers did not, however, hinder Luther from degrading the authorities and the Princes in the eyes of the people in the most relentless and public manner. In his mortification at the want of response to his call he allowed himself to be carried away to strictures and predictions which greatly excited the masses.

In his work “On the secular power” he asks: “Would you learn why God has decreed such a terrible fate to befall the worldly Princes?” His answer is: “God has delivered them up to a perverted mind and means to make an end of them, just as in the case of the clerical Princes.... Secular lords should rule over the land and the people in outward matters. This they neglected. All they could do was to rob and oppress the people, heaping tax upon tax and rate upon rate.” He reminds his readers that the Romans, too, acted unjustly in things both spiritual and temporal—until “they were destroyed. There now! there you see God’s judgment on the great braggarts.”[898]—“There are few Princes,” he says, in the same writing, “who are not regarded as either fools or knaves. This is because they prove themselves to be such, and the common people are growing to understand it; scorn for Princes, which God calls ‘contemptum,’ prevails among the peasants and common folk; and I fear there will be no stopping this unless the Princes behave as beseems Princes and begin again to govern reasonably and justly. Your tyranny and wantonness cannot be endured much longer.”[899] His chief grievance here and elsewhere is, that the rulers do not allow the gospel to be freely preached, but their “dancing, hunting, races, games and such-like worldly pleasures” he also holds up to execration. “Who does not know that in heaven a Prince is like a hare?” i.e. it would take many beaters to locate one.[900] “I do not say these things in the hope that the secular Princes will profit”; it is not indeed absolutely impossible for a Prince to be a good Christian, “but such a case is rare.” A Prince who is at the same time a Christian is “one of the greatest wonders and a most precious sign of the potency of Divine Grace.”[901]—It has been already pointed out that, in seeking the causes of the Peasant-War, we must take into account these inflammatory discourses of Luther’s to the people and his imperious demand for freedom to preach the “Evangel.”

In his “Exhortation to Peace” of the year 1525, he addresses “the Princes and Lords,” spiritual and temporal, and tells them they have themselves to blame for the seditious risings of the peasants: “We have no one on earth to thank for such disorder and revolt but you, Princes and Lords, and more particularly you, blind bishops and mad priests”; you are not merely enemies of the Evangel, but “rob and tax in order to live in luxury and state, until the poor, common people neither can nor will bear it any longer. The sword is at your throat,” etc.; here he is speaking to the “tyrannical and raging authorities,” as he terms them, of that sword which, according to the words he had flung among the people in earlier years, had long been unsheathed.[902]—To Frederick his Elector he had written, on March 7, 1522, that the Princes who were hostile to the Evangel did not see that they were “forcing the people to rebel, and behaving as though they wished themselves or their children to be exterminated; this, without a doubt, God will send as a punishment.”[903]

How Luther was wont to criticise the authorities in his sermons, regardless of the effect it might produce in such a period of excitement, appears from a sermon preached on August 20, 1525, i.e. at the time of the great peasant rising in Germany.

“Let anyone count up the Princes and rulers who fear God more than man. How many do you think they will number? You could write all their names on one finger, or as someone has said, on a signet ring.”[904] “At the Courts nowadays infidelity, egotism and avarice prevail among the Princes and their councillors ... they say: my will be done and forget that there is a God in heaven above.”[905] “These braggarts and great lords think they are always in the right, and want others to give judgment and pass sentence as pleases them. If this is not done, woe betide the judge.”[906]