Chapter XXVIII

THE NEW DOGMAS IN AN HISTORICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL LIGHT

1. The Bible text and the Spirit as the “True Tests of Doctrine”

Luther’s theological opinions present an attractive field to the psychologist desirous of studying his character. They are in great part, as has been several times shown, the result of his experiences, inward or outward, and appear peculiarly suited to meet his own case. Hence an examination of his doctrines will be of great value, particularly towards an understanding of his inner history.

The specifically Lutheran doctrine of the Bible as sole judge in matters of faith, i.e. the old, so-called “formal principle” of Protestantism, deserves to be considered first, though, in point of time, it was not the first to be reached by Luther. Actually it was first broached by the author of the schism only when the opposition between his newly discovered views and the Church’s teaching determined him to set aside both her claim to act as judge, and all other outward authority on doctrine. Refusing to be bound by the Church, in place of the teaching office with its gift of infallibility, which, according to the belief of the ancient Church, guards the treasure of revelation and therefore also decides on the sense of Holy Scripture, Luther set up as supreme arbiter the letter of the Bible. From this source, so he teaches, the faithful draw the doctrines of the faith, each one according to his ability and enlightenment.

The interpretation of the Sacred Books, in his view, takes place under the illumination of the Holy Ghost, and such an illumination he claimed first and foremost for himself. “Any believer who has better grounds and authority from Scripture on his side, is more to be believed than the Pope or a whole Council.”[1369]

Liberty for the Examination of Scripture and Luther’s Autonomy.

Luther only gradually reached his teaching concerning the supremacy of Holy Scripture.

His examination at Augsburg drew forth from him his first statements on this subject. In the postscript to his own report of the interview he places Holy Scripture first amongst the theological sources, adding that it was merely being corrupted by the so-called sacred Decrees of the Church;[1370] in his appeal to the Council he also places the Bible and its decision (i.e. his interpretation) above the Pope. Even then, however, he admitted the authority of the Council side by side with that of the Bible only in so far as he confidently looked to the Council for a decision in his favour. The fact that about this time he fancied he could descry Antichrist in the Pope reveals at once the wide gulf he was about to create between all ecclesiastical authority and Scripture privately interpreted.—Without having as yet formally proclaimed the new principle on Holy Scripture, he nevertheless declared at the Leipzig Disputation, that Scripture ranked above a Council,[1371] and that Œcumenical Councils had already erred in matters of faith. Only when driven into a corner by his defence of the heresy of Hus, and after fruitless evasions, were these admissions wrung from him by Eck. Any light thus thrown on the matter by the Catholic speaker was, however, at once obscured by the following ambiguous clause added by Luther: “Councils have erred, and may err, particularly on points which do not appertain to faith.”[1372]

Immediately after the Leipzig Disputation, in a letter addressed by himself and Carlstadt to the Elector, Luther lays it down that “a layman with the Scripture on his side is more to be believed in than the Pope and a Council without Scripture.”[1373] Then, in the “Resolutiones super propositionibus Lipsiæ disputatis,” he gives utterance to an assertion behind which he seeks to shelter his views: “Faith does not originate in authority but is produced in the heart only by the Holy Ghost, though man is indeed moved to faith by word and example.”[1374]

Yet, as though he himself wished to demonstrate the perils his new principle involved, not merely for the interpretation of the Bible but even for the integrity of the Sacred Books, he makes in the very same writing, on ostensibly intrinsic grounds, his famous onslaught on the Epistle of St. James which had been urged against him. Because this canonical Epistle tells against his doctrine of Justification, he will have it that, “its style is far beneath the dignity of an Apostle and is not to be compared with that of Paul.”[1375] Already at the Leipzig Disputation he had attacked the second Book of the Machabees, which did not suit his views, again for intrinsic reasons and because it ran counter to true doctrine; the Church had indeed admitted it into the Canon, but “she could not raise the status of a book nor impart to it a higher value than it actually possessed.”[1376]

From that time forward Luther gives the most varied expression to the principle of the free interpretation of Scripture: He declares, that the Bible may be interpreted by everyone, even by the “humble miller’s maid, nay, by a child of nine if it has the faith.”[1377] “The sheep must judge whether the pastors teach in Christ’s own tone.”[1378] “Christ alone, and none other than the Crucified, do we acknowledge as our Master. Paul will not have us believe him or an angel (Gal. i. 8, 12) unless Christ lives and speaks in him.” He is at pains to inform “the senseless Sophists, the unlearned bishops, monks and priests, the Pope and all his Gomorrahs” that we were baptised, not in the name of any Father of the Church, “but in the name of Jesus Christ.”[1379]

“That a Christian assembly or congregation has the right and the power to judge of doctrine and to appoint and dismiss preachers” is the title of one of Luther’s writings of 1523.[1380] Later we meet the downright declaration: “Neither Church, nor Fathers, nor Apostles, nor angels are to be listened to except so far as they teach the pure Word of God (‘nisi afferant et doceant purum verbum Dei’).”[1381]

In his bias against his foes he does not pause to consider that the very point at issue is to discern what the “pure Word of God” is, for, where it exists, any opposition on the part of “Church, Fathers and Apostles” is surely inconceivable. It is merely an echo of his early mystic theories when, in a dreamy sort of way, he hints, that the pure Word manifests itself to each believer and reveals itself to the world without the intervention of any outward authority. It was clearly mere prejudice in his own favour which led him to be ruled by the one idea that the “pure Word of God” was to be found nowhere but in his own reading of the Bible.

How greatly he allowed himself to be deceived by such fancies is already apparent in Luther’s earliest known statements on Scripture at the very beginning of the public controversy. His devotion to Biblical study from his youth, and the academic laurels he had won in this branch of learning, led him, consciously or not, to find in himself an embodiment of Holy Scripture. Only in this way can we explain his strange language concerning the Bible in his “Eyn Freiheyt dess Sermons” against Tetzel. Here, at the very commencement, instead of setting quietly about his task, which was to defend his new interpretation against the tradition, objected by his opponent, he sings a pæan in praise of the unassailable Divine Word. “All who blaspheme Scripture with their false glosses,” he writes, “shall perish by their own sword, like Goliath (1 Kings xvii. 51).... Christ’s doctrine is His Divine Word. Whence it is forbidden, not only to this blasphemer [Tetzel], but to any angel in heaven, to change one letter of it. For it is written: ‘God does not deny what He has once said,’ Job xiii. [xiv.], and in the Psalter [cxviii. 89]: ‘For ever, O Lord, Thy word standeth firm.’ Not a jot or tittle of the most insignificant letter of the law of God shall pass; everything must be fulfilled.”[1382] Here Tetzel becomes a rude ass, “who brays at Luther,” reminding the latter of a “sow” that defiles the venerable Scripture.[1383]

How uncalled for his emphatic words quoted above on the value of the Bible really were can be more readily perceived now from a distance; for his opponents’ esteem and that of the Church generally for the Word of God was certainly not behind his, whilst the Church provided a safeguard for Holy Scripture which Luther was unwilling to admit. But in those days, in the midst of the struggle, such praises showered by Luther on Holy Writ served to make people think—not at all to his disadvantage—that he was the herald and champion of the Bible, which the Popish Church did not reckon at its true worth, whereas, all the while, he should have been striving to show that his contentions really had the support of Scripture. Even later his misleading cry was ever: Back to the sacred stronghold of the Bible! Back to the “true, pure and undefiled Word of God!”

“Thy Word is the Truth” was his habitual battle-shout, though about this there had never been the least dispute.

“Against all the sayings of the Fathers,” he says in 1522 in his reply to King Henry VIII, “against all the arts and words of angels, men and devils I set the Scriptures and the Gospel.... Here I stand and here I defy them.... The Word of God I count above all else and the Divine Majesty supports me; hence I should not turn a hair were a thousand Augustines against me, and am certain that the true Church adheres with me to God’s Word.” “Here Harry of England must hold his tongue.” Harry would see how Luther “stood upon his rock” and that he, Harry, “twaddled” like a “silly fool.”[1384]

Experience given by the Spirit.

The “rock” on which Luther’s interpretation of the Bible rests is a certain inward feeling and perception by the individual of the Bible’s teaching.

In the last resort it is on an inward experience of having been taught by the Spirit the truth and meaning of the Divine words that the Christian must firmly take his stand. Just as Luther believed himself to have passed through such an experience, so, according to him, all others must first reach it and then make it their starting-point.

This is the Spirit from on High that co-operates with the Word of Scripture.

“Each man must believe solely because it is the Word of God and because he feels within that it is true, even though an angel from heaven and all the world should preach against it.”[1385] We must not regard the “opinion of all Christendom” but “each one for himself alone” must believe the Scriptures.[1386] “The Word itself must content the heart and embrace and seize a man and, as it were, hold him captive till he feels how true and right it is.”

“Hence every Christian can learn the truth from Scripture,” so a present-day Protestant theologian describes Luther’s then teaching;[1387] “he is bound by no human school of interpretation, but the plain sense of Scripture and the experience of his heart suffice.” He adds: “This might of course draw down upon Luther the charge of subjectivism.” “What Luther said of the ‘whisper’ of the word of forgiveness is well known. Thus [according to Luther] God can, when necessary, work without the use of any means.” Thanks to the “whisper” the Bible becomes a sure guide, “for [according to him] the Holy Ghost always works in the heart the selfsame truth.” “From the peculiar religious standpoint of his own experience of salvation,” Luther, so the same theologian admits, determined his “attitude towards Scripture.” In this we have one of the results of his “personal experience.”

“How it comes to pass,” says Luther, “that Christ thus enters the heart you cannot tell; but your heart feels plainly, by the experience of faith, that He is there indeed.”[1388] “When the Holy Ghost performs His office then it proceeds.”[1389] “No one can rightly understand God or the Word of God unless he receives it directly from the Holy Ghost.”

When his friend Carlstadt, together with whom Luther had at first insisted on Scripture only, later struck out a path of his own in doctrine and ecclesiastical practice while continuing to appeal to Scripture and to his own enlightenment, even the controversy with him and the “fanatics” failed to make Luther relinquish in theory his standpoint concerning the Bible and the Spirit as the one source and rule of faith. He became, however, more cautious in formulating it and endeavoured at least to leave a back door open. He was less insistent in his assertion that the Spirit instructed, by the inward Word, each one who read the Scriptures; so much the more did he emphasise the supposed “clearness of the outward Word,” viz. the Bible, and deprecate any wanton treatment of it (by anyone save himself); at the same time he began to lay stress on the outward side of the Church, on the preaching office and the administration of the Sacraments.[1390] The fanatics he reproves for “merely gaping at the Spirit in their hearts,” whereas the outward articles must necessarily precede this.[1391] At times what he says almost looks like a repudiation of his earlier theory of enlightenment through the Spirit; for instance, when he describes how the fanatics wait “till the heavenly voice comes and God speaks to them.”[1392] Now, the outward Word of the Gospel, proclaimed by men truly “called,” is to be the guiding star amidst the mischief wrought by the sectarians; this outward Word, so he now fancies, will surely avail to decide every issue, seeing that it is so clear; only by dint of juggling could the sense of the Bible, as manifest in the outward Word, be distorted; looked at fairly it at once settled every question—needless to say in Luther’s favour; to understand it, all that was needed was the “natural language,” the “Lady Empress who far excels all subtle inventions.”[1393]

As to the alleged clearness of the word of Scripture it is sufficient to recall that he himself indirectly challenged it by accusing the whole Church of having misunderstood the Bible, and to consider the abyss that separated his interpretation, even of the most vital texts, from that of the scholars of the past. “Though we had the Bible and read it,” he says, “yet we understood nothing of it.”[1394]—Nevertheless he fancied he could save his theory by appealing to the clearness of the text and the assistance rendered by a knowledge of languages. “St. Paul wills” (1 Cor. xiv. 29), so Luther says, in a writing on the schools, “that Christians should judge all doctrine, though for this we must needs be acquainted with the language. For the preacher or teacher may indeed read the Bible through and through as much as he chooses, but he will sometimes be right and sometimes wrong, if there be no one there to judge whether he is doing it well or ill. Thus in order to judge there must be skill or a knowledge of tongues, otherwise it is all to no purpose.”[1395]

But above all, as he impresses on the reader in the same tract, he himself had thrown light on the Bible by his knowledge of languages; his interpretation, thanks to the “light” of the languages, had effected “such great things that all the world marvels and must confess that now we have the Gospel almost as pure and undefiled as the Apostles had it, that it is restored to its pristine purity, and is even more undefiled than at the time of St. Jerome or Augustine.”[1396] His willingness, expressed from time to time, to submit himself or any other teacher to the judgment of anyone possessed of greater learning and a more profound spiritual sense, attracted many enlightened minds to his party.[1397]

Luther’s self-contradiction in speaking, first, of the great clearness of the Bible, and then of its great obscurity, cannot fail to strike one.

“Whoever now wants to become a theologian,” he says, for instance, “enjoys a great advantage. For, first, he has the Bible which is now so clear that he can read it without any difficulty.” “Should anyone say that it is necessary to have the interpretation of the Fathers and that Scripture is obscure, you must reply, that that is untrue. There is no book on earth more plainly written than Holy Scripture; in comparison with all other books it is as the sun to any other light.”[1398] Elsewhere he says: “The ungodly sophists [the Schoolmen] have asserted, that in Holy Scripture there is much that is obscure and not yet clearly explained,” but according to him they were not able to bring forward one vestige of proof; “if the words are obscure in one passage, they are clear in another,” and a comparison makes everything plain, particularly to one who is learned in languages.[1399]—Thus the Bible, according to a further statement, is “clearer, easier and more certain than any other writing.”[1400] “It is in itself quite certain, quite easy and quite plain; it is its own explanation; it is the universal argument, judge and enlightener, and makes all clear to all.”[1401]

Later, however, the idea that Holy Scripture was obscure preponderated with him. Two days before his death Luther wrote in Latin on a piece of paper, which was subsequently found on his table, his thoughts on the difficulty of understanding Scripture: “No one can understand the Bucolics of Virgil who has not been a herdsman for five years; nor his Georgics unless he has laboured five years in the fields. In order to understand aright the epistles of Cicero a man must have been full twenty years in the public service of a great State. No one need fancy he has tasted Holy Scripture who has not ruled Churches for a hundred years with prophets like Elias and Eliseus, with John the Baptist, Christ and the Apostles.”[1402] In all likelihood his experiences with the sectarians in his own camp led him towards the end of his life to lay more stress on the difficulty of understanding the Bible.

Even with the “plain, arid Scripture” and a clear brain it may easily happen, as he says, to a man to fall into danger through the Bible, by looking at it from “his own conceit,” as “through a painted glass,” and “seeing no other colour than that of the glass.”[1403] Such people cannot then be set right, but become “masters of heresy.”[1404] All heresy seems to him to come from Scripture and to be based on it. There is no heretic, he says in a sermon in 1528, who does not appeal to Scripture; hence it came about that people called the Bible a heresy-book.[1405] The “heresy-book” was a favourite topic with him. Two years earlier he had used the expression twice on one day,[1406] and in 1525, when complaining in a sermon that the fanatics decked themselves out with Scripture, he said: “Thus it is true what people say, viz. that Holy Scripture is a heresy-book, i.e. a book that the heretics claim for themselves; there is no other book that they misuse so much as this book, and there has never been a heresy so bad or so gross that it has not sheltered itself behind Scripture.”[1407] These preachers from among the fanatics, he says, boast of the voice of God and of the Spirit, but they were never sent; let them prove by miracles their Divine mission![1408]

Thus he had retracted nothing of his strange doctrine concerning private enlightenment; on the contrary, when not actually dealing with the sectarians, he still declared with that persistence of which he was such a master and which shrank from no self-contradictions, that the Spirit alone taught man how to understand the Scriptures, now that man, owing to original sin, was quite unable to grasp even the plainest passages. “In it [the Bible] not one word is of so small account as to allow of our understanding it by reason.”[1409] Only by virtue of the higher light by which he understood Scripture could a man “impartially prove and judge the different spirits and their doctrines.” This he wrote in his “De servo arbitrio” at a time when he had already engaged upon the struggle with the “Heavenly Prophets.”[1410] And to these principles he remained faithful till death without, however, as a Protestant scholar repeatedly points out of the several sides of Luther’s theology, “explaining more clearly” their relation to the difficulties involved.

Concerning the inward Word or the enlightenment by the Spirit some words of Luther’s in 1531 may be given here.

In that year he preached on the Gospel of St. John. He dwelt at some length on his favourite passage: “Whoever believeth in Me hath everlasting life,” and its context. Here, speaking repeatedly of the outward and the inward Word, he insists especially on the former and particularly on the hearing of sermons with faith, though so far was he from relinquishing the inward Word that he combines it in a strange way with the outward, and finally arrives once more at his earlier pet idea: Whoever is taught inwardly by the Spirit is free to judge and decide on all things.

“The Lord Christ intends,” so he explains, “that we should hold fast and remain by the outward, spoken Word, and thereby He has put down reason from its seat,” i.e. has repudiated the objections of the fanatics who differed from him. Christ, according to Luther, exhorts us “diligently to listen to and learn the Word.”[1411] The beginning of Justification is in this, that “God proclaims to you the spoken, outward Word.”[1412] To this end God has His messengers and vicars. “When you hear a sermon from St. Paul or from me, you hear God the Father Himself; yet both of us, you and I, have one schoolmaster and doctor, viz. the Father ... only that God speaks to you through me.”[1413] Here he does not enter into the question of his mission, though he shows plainly enough that he was not going to be set aside. “God must give the spoken Word,” “otherwise it does not make its way. But if you are set on helping yourselves, why then should I preach? In that case you have no need of me.... We may be angered and stupefied over it” (viz. at the apparent divergence between the Word of God and reason), yet we must listen and weigh “the Word that is preached by the lips of Christ.”[1414]

Excellent as this exhortation may be so far as St. Paul was concerned, the speaker is at no pains to supply his hearer with any proof of his own saying, viz. “that God speaks to you through me.” He insists upon it, however, and now comes the intervention of the Spirit: God must “inspire the conviction that it is His Word”[1415] which has been heard. “Without the Word we must not do anything, but must be taught by God.”[1416] “When the heart can feel assured that God the Father Himself is speaking to us [when we listen to a sermon], then the Holy Ghost and the light enter in; then man is enlightened and becomes a happy master, and is able to decide and judge of all doctrine, for he has the light, and faith in the Divine Word, and feels certain within his breast that his doctrine is the very Word of God.”[1417] When you “feel this in your heart, then account yourself one of the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will allow Him to be Master and surrender yourself to Him. In this way will you be saved.”[1418]

The real breathing of the Spirit of God, however, confirms the utterances only of the “preaching office,” viz. Luther’s and the Lutherans’. This he proclaims in the following words: “The true breathing and inspiration of the Holy Ghost is that which is wafted through the preaching office and the outward Word.”[1419]

In what follows, for the better understanding of Luther’s attitude towards the Bible, we shall examine two consequences of his subjective ways, viz. their effect on the inspiration and the Canon of Scripture, and the exegetical disagreement which was the result of the principle of inward experience, also the means he chose to remedy it.

Inspiration and the Canon of Scripture.

In the matter of the inspiration of Scripture Luther never went so far as the fanatical enthusiasts of later Lutheranism, who, in their systems, taught an actual verbal inspiration, according to which the writers of the Bible had not merely been impelled, enlightened, and infallibly preserved from error, but had received every word from God. On the contrary, owing to his wanton handling of the Bible, he takes the inspiration of its writers so widely and vaguely that the very idea of inspiration is practically evaporated. The Bible is indeed, according to him, an outcome of the inspiration of God and is the writing and Word of the Holy Ghost (“Spiritus auctor est libri”),[1420] and may accordingly be described as “the Holy Ghost’s own especial book, writing and Word”—which he sometimes explains almost as though he had been a believer in verbal inspiration.[1421]

The fact is, however, that he sees “in the sacred writers no other form of spiritual illumination than that displayed in the verbal preaching of the Divine witnesses.”[1422] “Moreover we occasionally find him questioning whether in certain passages the Holy Ghost ... is really so unquestionably present as in other parts of Scripture.” The truth is “he never formulated any detailed theory of Scriptural inspiration. With Luther the action of the Holy Ghost, on the witnesses of both Old Testament and New, is always one and the same, whether they proclaim the Word verbally or by writing; nowhere do we meet with the thought that they were under the influence of any other inspiration when they wrote.”[1423]

The freedom he allowed himself, no less in the matter of inspiration than in the principle of the Bible only, explains the distinction he so often makes between the character and importance of the various parts of the “Word of God,” which he will have one keep in view when searching in Scripture for the truths of faith. In passages where religion is not concerned, particularly in historical statements, he believes that the tools of the Holy Ghost both could and did err.[1424] He thinks that “the predictions of the prophets concerning the Kings and secular affairs often turned out wrong.”[1425] The inspiration of the Apostles (and Evangelists) in the New-Testament writings was merely a part of their general “office,” not a “special inspiration” in the nature of a “second power added to and independent of it.” “The predominant importance of the Apostles he traces back to their general inspiration in the sense described above.”[1426]

Catholic doctors before Luther’s day had showed themselves far more jealous of the sacredness of the Bible, as regards both the idea of inspiration and the equal value of all the books, and their every part. In spite of this Luther would have it that he had been the first to make the Bible respected.

One point deserving of consideration as an instance of Luther’s wantonness is his attitude towards the Canon of the Sacred Books.

How was he to prove that this or that book was to be included amongst the writings which constituted the Word of God, now that he had rejected the testimony of ecclesiastical tradition? According to the teaching of the ancient Church, it was tradition and the authority of the Church which vouched for the canonical character of the books of the Bible. Luther was confronted with this objection by Johann Eck at the Leipzig Disputation, who quoted the well-known words of St. Augustine, that he was compelled “to believe the Gospel only on the authority of the Catholic Church.”[1427] No longer recognising the authority of the Church, Luther met the objection by some strange evasions.[1428] When at last he saw that no other meaning could be read into the passage he threw it overboard and wrote: “If this meaning be not in St. Augustine’s words then it were better to repudiate his saying. For it is contrary to Scripture, to the Spirit and to all experience.”[1429] Even for the inspired value of the books included in the Canon he appealed in his arbitrary fashion, not to the infallible Church, but to the “inward testimony of the Spirit.”

He could hardly escape being thus thrown back on this inward, mystical attestation, seeing that, according to him, human reason is of little assistance in the matter. Here the “inner sense” has to come in and, just as under the illumination of the Spirit of God, it imparts certainty concerning the meaning of the Bible, so also it discerns the dignity and godly value of Scripture. For obvious reasons, here again, he fails to favour us with any “clearer explanation” of his theory. One thing, however, emerges clearly, viz. that the feeling of certainty regarding both the meaning and the contents is practically identical with the feeling that the writing in question is Divine; since the Spirit from on High teaches me the truth which lies in the sense of Scripture, so also it must teach me that it is Scripture; the apprehension of the sense and of the Divine character of the sacred pages is one and the same.[1430]

It is thus that Luther clothes in intangible, mystical language the vital question of religion here involved; at the Leipzig Disputation he had used terms no less elusive: Every book that really belongs to the Canon has authority and certainty “per se ipsum.”[1431] His mystical words were the outcome of deep-seated tendencies within him; Tauler’s language, which Luther had so skilfully made his own, was to assist him in concealing the obscurity and lack of logic inherent in his views.

In reality, nevertheless, like the Catholics, he accepted the Canon of Holy Scripture as handed down by antiquity; only that he granted to the subjective influence of the “testimony of the Spirit” a far-reaching and destructive force. He arbitrarily struck out of the Canon quite a number of authentic writings,[1432] which will be enumerated elsewhere[1433] together with his statements concerning them. His literary opponents had a right to represent to him that so “strange and arbitrary”[1434] a proceeding was merely a result of his theory that the sacred books must prove their character and value to each man individually. At any rate, his attitude towards the Bible cannot be regarded as at all logical.[1435]

Inward Assurance and Disagreements Without.

The second consequence of Luther’s biblical subjectivism which we have to consider lies outside him. It is the disconcerting divergence in interpretation which was the immediate result of his doctrine of “inward experience,” to correct which he had recourse to some curious remedies.

First of all we may append some further quotations from his writings to those already adduced. The significance of this remarkable side of the psychology of his doctrine is often not fully appreciated, because it seems scarcely believable that Luther should have ventured so far into the airy region of idealism. And yet, on the other hand, we have here the principal reason for describing the new doctrine as something interior, and as one doing better justice to our feelings and personality, which was Luther’s own claim and, after him, that of Protestants generally. The difficulty, however, is that almost every sentence of Luther’s regarding the part played by “inward assurance” in respect of the Bible, raises the question how that oneness of interpretation which he ever presupposes, is to escape shipwreck, even in the case of essential doctrines.

As early as Jan. 18, 1518, in his advice to Spalatin on the reading of Scripture, Luther had appealed to the mystic “influence,” telling him to distrust himself and to rely solely on the “influxus Spiritus”; this appeal he supports on his own inward experience.[1436] In this case his experience, however, mainly concerned the confirmation of his chief doctrine; for it was under an inspiration from on High that he had begun to feel his way to the new Evangel of Justification (see vol. iii., p. 110 ff.). But what was to be done when others, too, laid claim to a similar experience and inspiration?

At a later date he described to his friends how he had learnt to understand Scripture “in maximis agonibus et tentationibus”; it was thus he had found in the Bible the Divinity of Christ and the articles on the Trinity; even now he was more certain of these truths by experience than by faith.[1437] Even the absolute predestination of the damned to hell, the entire absence of free-will for doing what is good and other extravagant opinions questioned even by his own followers, he declares he had learned directly from the Bible. In 1534 he places Scripture side by side with inward experience (or the Spirit), as the warrant—even in the case of others—for all knowledge of things Divine.

This he likewise applies to the Apostles’ Creed.[1438] In 1537 he said in a sermon at Schmalkalden, “not only did all this [what is professed in the Creed] take place as we read in the Word of the Gospel, but the Holy Ghost also writes it inwardly in our heart.”[1439] He accepts the teaching of the Apostles’ Creed because he has convinced himself that it is based on Holy Writ.[1440] But how if others are not thus convinced? Were they too to be fastened to the dogma?

R. Seeberg gives a good account of Luther’s views on the character of the dogmas of the ancient Church.[1441] “He treats the symbols of the ancient Church with great respect, particularly the Apostles’ Creed which contains all the chief articles of faith.[1442] But this does not mean that he believes in each creed or Council as such.” “In his work ‘Von den Conciliis’ with masterly historical criticism [?] he denies all binding authority even to the ancient Councils”; even the Council of the Apostles passed resolutions which were afterwards rescinded, and so did the Nicene Council. “Dogma is true,” so runs Luther’s teaching as given by Seeberg, “only so far as it agrees with Scripture; in itself it is of no authority. But the truth of Scripture is one that is attested interiorly. Hence we can say that the Holy Ghost produces in us the assurance of the true doctrine [of the Apostles’ Creed].”[1443]—The page-heading where these words occur runs: “Luther’s independence of dogma.”

A highly important statement on the interior instruction that goes on when we read Scripture is contained in Luther’s quite early work “De Captivitate Babylonica” (1520): The soul, he says there, referring to a misunderstood passage of St. Augustine’s on a well-known fact in the natural order, is so affected by the truth, that, thanks to it, it is able to judge rightly and surely of all things; it is forced to confess with unfailing certitude that this is the truth, just as reason affirms with unfailing certitude that three and seven make ten; the same is the case with all real Christians and their spiritual sense which, according to 1 Cor. ii. 15, judges all things and is judged of no man.[1444]—The last words of the Apostle refer, however, to the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, bestowed for a while by God on some few Christians in the early days of the Church, and cannot apply to the ordinary conditions of later times.

Luther simply ignores the objection, that, if every man is judge, unutterable discord must ensue. The way in which he contrived so long to conceal this from himself is psychologically remarkable. For instance, in one of the principal passages where this objection should have been faced, viz. in his work against King Henry VIII, he glosses over the difficulty with the assertion that, even under the Pope, there was also no unity of doctrine; he then consoles himself with the words of Christ (John vi.), that all true Christians “shall be taught of God” and that every one that hath heard the Father cometh to the Saviour; the Spirit of God makes all to be one and effects an “idem docere, idem confiteri, idem sequi.”—We can only wonder at the idealism that could expect such results in a world inhabited by human beings.—In the end, however, since this was scarcely to be looked for, “external unity would be sufficiently safeguarded by the one Baptism and one Supper,” whereby all “testify to the oneness of their faith and spirit.”[1445] At any rate, he is confident that the true explanation (viz. his own) of the truths of salvation will gain the upper hand. For the Church cannot perish.

In point of fact Luther really fancies himself justified in appealing to this entirely new meaning put by him on the promise to the Church that she shall never perish; she is indestructible because true believers will always be there to maintain Luther’s interpretation of revelation and of the imputed righteousness of Christ, and because any general falling away from the truth is not to be thought of. Even though very many, indeed the greater number, deny the true Scripture teaching, still, many others remain, as, of yore, the seven thousand when Israel fell away from God. According to him even these may be held captive all their life in some error concerning the faith and reach the right road and faith in the grace of Christ only on their death-bed, according to the promise in John x. 28.[1446] In view of the darkness prevalent in former ages this appears to him to suffice in order to enable us to say that the Church has not really perished,[1447] and to save the cause of private enlightenment on the Bible. For this must stand fast, viz. that the Spirit of God most surely bears witness to the contents of the Divine Word in the hearts of the hearers and readers. “Luther,” says a Protestant exponent of his theology, “laid this down time after time.” “His statements on this subject cannot fail, however, to raise certain questions in our minds.”[1448]

They gave rise to questions in his own day, and to something more than mere questions. The bitter theological dissensions already hinted at were the result. The inevitable divergency in the interpretation of the Bible was seen everywhere, and a hundred different opinions, some based on the inward assurance given by the “Spirit of God,” some on the reflections of reason, took the field. We know to what an extent Luther had to suffer from the discord born of his principle, not merely from such comparatively unimportant persons as Jacob Schenk[1449] and his “disgracefully arrogant” colleague, Johann Agricola, not merely from the fanatics and Anabaptists who found in the Bible a different teaching on Baptism, divine worship and morality, or from the Zwinglians with their divergent biblical interpretation of the Eucharist, but even, so to speak, in his own family, from Melanchthon, who was rash enough to incline to the Swiss reformed doctrines and to fight shy of the stricter Lutheranism. “The presumption,” Luther declares, strangely enough, “is really unbearable, that people should rise up against the authority of the Church,” despise the teaching of the best and ablest, and only worship their own views in Holy Scripture. “The name of the Church should be held in high honour.”[1450] He forbore, however, to specify which Church he meant, and moreover he had set himself above every Church. “All other forms of arrogance,” he declares, “can be endured and allow of improvement, as in the healing art, in philosophy, in poetry, in mechanics and in the case of the young.... But that shocking ‘arrogantia theologiæ’ is the source of all evil, and a consuming fire.”[1451]

So little did he succeed in repressing “theological arrogance,” but rather, by his action, threw open the doors to it, that in 1525 he was forced to lament:[1452] “There are as many sects and beliefs as there are heads. This fellow will have nothing to do with baptism, another denies the Sacrament, a third believes that there is another world between this and the Last Day. Some teach that Christ is not God, some say this, some that.... There is now no rustic so rude but that, if he dreams or fancies anything, it must be the whisper of the Holy Ghost and he himself a prophet.... There is no one who does not wish to be cleverer than Luther; they all want to try their steel on me.... They speak like madmen; I have during the year to listen to many such wretched folk. In no other way can the devil come so close to me, that I must admit. Formerly the world was full of noisy, disembodied spirits giving themselves out to be the souls of men; now it is full of uproarious spirits with bodies, who all declare that they are real angels.”[1453]

He has this crumb of comfort: The world is the devil’s playground; and uproars there must be.[1454]

“This is all due,” he says finally, truly and aptly, “to their bringing their conceit with them to the study of Scripture, which has to submit to being judged, moulded and led by their head and reason,”[1455]—surely a bitter punishment for throwing over the divinely appointed authority of the Church, which decides on the sense of the Bible.

“By thus making individual experience the test,” remarks a Protestant theologian, “the door seemed opened wide to neverending dissension.... Luther did not succeed in carrying his theory to its right conclusion. Indeed we even find him formulating thoughts which seem to tend back to the old, mechanical authority of Scripture.” According to this writer, Luther’s conception of Scripture presented certain “imperfections” which, “even in principle, were practically at variance with it; these, however, disappeared as the fanatic movement taught Luther their disastrous effects.” The same writer asks finally: “But was it really a question merely of ‘imperfections’ which did not endanger the very essence of his views?”[1456]

“What did Luther set up, instead of tradition, as a principle of interpretation?” another Protestant theologian recently queried. He answers: “In theory, that Scripture interprets itself; in practice however, as it doesn’t, his own theology.”[1457]

Remedies against Disagreement. The Outward Word.

Since the harmony of the “Spirit,” which Luther had so confidently looked for, failed to show itself in people’s minds and not a glimmer of hope of any future agreement was visible, he found it necessary to insist far more strongly than heretofore on the outward Word;[1458] this was to check unwelcome inward revelations, to put everything in order and to be a bulwark against unusual views. “Now that the Apostles have preached the Word,” so runs one of his most interesting pronouncements on this subject,[1459] “and left us their writings, so that there is nothing more to reveal than what they have written, there is no need of any special new revelation, or miracles. This we know from the writings of the Apostles.” It would be a different matter if all were filled with the Holy Ghost and His gifts; “were this so it would be an easy thing to preach and to govern and all would go on quite smoothly and well, as indeed it ought. But unfortunately this is not the case, and those who have the Holy Ghost and a right understanding are not so common,” but “there are plenty who fancy they have mastered Scripture and have the Holy Ghost without measure.” These want to be thought “far more deeply and profoundly initiated” than Luther himself, and “much more learned than we are.” This he is not unwilling to allow, but on one thing he must insist, viz. on the “Word!” “This old and tried doctrine of the Apostles” he has “again brought to light,” having found “all this darkened by the Pope and his human teaching”; “by the Grace of God we have brought it to light once more”; “it is the very same as the Apostles first taught. But it has not been brought to light again without a revelation of the Holy Ghost.... He had to illumine our minds that Holy Scripture might be rightly viewed and understood”; hence “no other word or revelation is to be expected” “contrary to this doctrine, even were an angel from heaven visibly to bring” a new doctrine. Everyone can see “that God is tempting the people, particularly in these latter days of which it is said, that the devil shall rule mightily over Christendom by means of Antichrist.”—Here, consequently, his teaching is put on a level with the “outward Word.”

The outward Word, according to other passages where Luther is rather more reticent concerning the “revelation” he had received, was that plain and unassailable Bible teaching on which all “Spirits” must agree without any danger of divergency. This Word he now identifies with preaching. Preaching, however, is part of the office, and both office and preaching were controlled by Luther; indeed the office had been instituted chiefly by him and his sovereign. Hence, in effect, the outward Word is still Luther’s word.

“Faith,” we read of the outward Word, seemingly contradicting the freedom Luther had formerly proclaimed, “comes of hearing, i.e. from preaching, or from the outward Word. This is the order established by God and He will not derogate from it. Hence contempt for the outward Word and for Scripture is rank blasphemy, which the secular authorities are bound to punish, according to the second Commandment which enjoins the punishment of blasphemy.” This occurs in the booklet officially circulated in 1536 among the pastors of the Saxon Electorate.[1460] A Protestant researcher who has recently made a special study of the “Inquisition” in the Saxon Electorate has the following remark concerning this statement, which is by no means without a parallel in Luther’s works: “Thus even contempt for Scripture—here meaning contempt for Luther’s interpretation of the Bible text—was already regarded as ‘rank blasphemy’ which it was the duty of the authorities to punish. To such a pass had Evangelical freedom already come.”[1461]

In order to uphold his own reading of the Bible against others which differed from his, Luther incidentally appealed with the utmost vigour, as the above examples show, to the Church, to tradition and to the Fathers, whose authority he had nevertheless solemnly renounced.

This was the case especially in the controversies on the Zwinglian doctrine of the Supper. In defending the Real Presence and the literal sense of the words of consecration, Luther was in the right. He could not resist the temptation to adduce the convincing testimony of tradition, the voice of the “Church” from the earliest ages, which spoke so loudly in defence of the truth. It was then that he wrote the oft-quoted words to Albert of Brandenburg, in order to retain him on his side and to preserve him from Zwinglian contamination: “That Christ is present in the Sacrament is proved by the books and writings, both Greek and Latin, of the dear Fathers, also by the daily usage and our experience till this very hour; which testimony of all the holy Christian Churches, even had we no other, should suffice to make us remain by this article.”[1462] It is true that elsewhere we find him saying of the tradition of the Fathers: “When the Word of God comes down to us through the Fathers it seems to me like milk strained through a coal-sack, when the milk must needs be black and nasty.” This meant, he says, “that the Word of God was in itself pure and true, bright and clear, but by the teaching of the Fathers, by their books and their writings, it was much darkened and corrupted.”[1463] “And even if the Fathers agreed with you,” he says elsewhere, “that is not enough. I want Holy Writ, because I too am fighting you in writing.”[1464]

In his controversy with Zwingli, Luther even came to plead the cause of the Catholic principle of authority. In his tract of 1527, “Das diese Wort Christi, ‘Das ist mein Leib’ noch fest stehen,” he declared that Zwingli’s interpretation of the Bible had already given rise to “many opinions, many factions and much dissension.” Such arbitrary exegesis neither can nor may go any further. “And if the world is to last much longer, we shall on account of such dissensions again be obliged, like the ancients, to seek for human contrivances and to set up new laws and ordinances in order to preserve the people in the unity of the faith. This will succeed as it succeeded before. In fine, the devil is too clever and powerful for us. He hinders us and stops the way everywhere. If we wish to study Scripture he raises up so much strife and dissension that we tire of it.... He is, and is called, Satan, i.e. an adversary.” He here attributes to the devil the defects of his own Scriptural system, and puts away as something wrong even the very thought that it contained faults, another trait to his psychological picture: “The devil is a conjurer.” “Unless God assists us, our work and counsel is of no avail. We may think of it as we like, he still remains the Prince of this world. Whoever does not believe this, let him simply try and see. Of this I have experienced something. But let no one believe me until he has himself experienced it.”[1465] There is no doubt, that, in 1527, Luther did have to go through some severe struggles of conscience.

The Swiss held fast to “Scripture” and to their own “Spirit.”

H. Bullinger, the leader of the Zwinglians, proved more logical than Luther in his interpretation of the new principle of Scripture. In his book on the difference between the Evangelical and Roman doctrines (Zürich, 1551) he deliberately rejected quite a number of traditional, Catholic practices which Luther had spared; for instance, the use of religious pictures in the churches, ceremonies, the liturgical chants, confession, etc. With this same weapon he attacked not only Catholicism, but also Luther’s doctrine of the Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament and the whole Church system as introduced by the Wittenbergers.

Luther, for his part, in order to retain the Bible on his side, used a very arbitrary method of Scripture interpretation both against the Swiss theologians and against Catholicism and its defenders. In many cases it was only his peculiar exegesis (to be considered below, xxviii., 2) that furnished him with the Scriptural arguments he needed.

Thus, in his attitude towards Scripture, the Wittenberg Professor wavers between tradition, to which he frequently appeals almost against his will, and that principle of independent study of the Bible under enlightenment from on high, which is ever obtruding itself on him. The latter principle he never denied, in spite of his sad experiences with the doctrine that everyone who is taught by the Holy Ghost can draw from Scripture his own belief, and, according to St. Paul, with the help of this light, test the teaching and opinions of all.[1466] Yet—strange as it may seem on the part of an assailant of authority—the last word on matters of faith belongs, according to him, to authority. This is his opinion for practical reasons, because not everyone can be expected, and but few are able, to undertake the task of finding their belief for themselves in the Bible. Moreover, what one may possibly have learnt from Scripture at the cost of toil and with the help of inspiration, cannot so readily become the common property of all. On the other hand, according to Luther, the “exterius iudicium” which is supported by the “externa claritas” of Scripture, as interpreted by himself and proclaimed with authority by the preachers, was intended for all.[1467]

The Way of Settling Doubts Concerning Faith. Assurance of Salvation and Belief in Dogma.

When we come to examine Luther’s teaching on the nature of the faith which is based on the Bible and to enquire how doubts regarding this Bible teaching were to be quieted, we are again faced by the utmost waywardness.

In his “Von beider Gestallt des Sacramentes” (1522), Luther says of belief in the truths of revelation generally: “And it is not enough for you to say: Luther, Peter or Paul has said it, but you must feel Christ Himself in your own conscience and be assured beyond all doubt that it is really the Word of God, even though all the world should be against it. So long as you have not this feeling it is certain that you have not tasted the Word of God, but are still hanging by your ears on the lips or the pen of man and not clinging with all your heart to the Word.” Since Christ is the one and only teacher it is plain “what horrid murderers of souls those are [viz. the Papists] who preach to souls the doctrines of men.”[1468]

The whole passage is of the utmost practical importance, because in it Luther seeks to solve the question anxiously asked by so many: Who will assure us that all that we are now told that we must believe if we do not wish to lose our souls, is really the teaching of Christ? To this he here gives an answer which is intended to satisfy even one in danger of death and to instruct him fully on the matter of his salvation.

The olden Church had given her faithful a clear answer which set every doubt at rest: The warrant for our belief is the authority of the Church instituted by Christ and endowed by God with infallibility. In effect the voice of the General Councils, the decisions of an unbroken line of vicars of Christ on the Papal throne, the teaching of the hierarchy everywhere and at every time, the consensus of the faithful, in brief, the outward testimony of Christ’s whole Church, aroused in all hearts the happy certainty that the faith offered was indeed the revelation of God; people, indeed, believed in God and in His Word, but what they believed was what the Church proposed for belief. The Church also declared, though not in the same sense as Luther, “Fides non ullorum auctoritate sed Spiritu solo Dei oritur in corde.”[1469] The Church taught, what the Council of Trent emphasised anew, viz. that, by the action of the Holy Ghost alone, i.e. by the supernatural Grace of God which exalts the powers of man, faith attains to what is requisite for salvation.

Luther, who overthrew the authority of the Church’s teaching office, was unable to provide the soul in its struggle after faith with any guarantee beyond his own authority to take the Church’s place. In his “Von beider Gestallt des Sacramentes” he refers to Christ Himself the man oppressed by doubt and fear, viz. to a court of appeal inaccessible to the seeker, and this he did at a time when he himself had started all kinds of discussions on the sense of the Gospel, and when Christ was being claimed in support of the most widely divergent views. He refers the enquirer to Christ, because here he deems it better not to say plainly “hold fast to me,” though elsewhere such an admonition was not too bold a one for him to give. “Think rather for yourself,” such is his advice, “you have death or persecution in front of you, and I cannot be with you then nor you with me. Each one must fight for himself and overcome the devil, death and the world. Were you at such a time to be looking round to see where I was, or I to see where you were, or were you disturbed because I or anyone else on earth asserted differently, you would be lost already and have let the Word slip from your heart, for you would be clinging, not to the Word, but to me or to some other; in that case there is no help.”[1470]

He thus leaves the anxious man “to himself” at the most awful of moments; elsewhere, too, he does the same. When he invites every man to “taste the Word of God” betimes and to “feel” how directly “the Master speaks within his heart,” this is merely a roundabout way of repeating the comfortless warning that “each one must fight for himself.” In other words, what he means is: I have no sure warrant to give in the stead of the Church’s authority; you must find out for yourself whether you have received the true Word of Christ by consulting your own feelings.

In addition to this, in the opinion of many Protestant theologians, the faith to be derived from the Bible which everyone must necessarily arrive at was very much circumscribed by Luther. “Man’s attitude towards Christ and His saving Grace” loomed so large with him, that it “decided the question whether a man was, or was not, a believer.” If, in the Protestantism of to-day, Luther’s “idea of faith” is frequently taken rather narrowly, it must be admitted that in many of his statements and demands he himself goes even further. We have here to do with that “two-sidedness in his attitude towards Scripture,” which “is apparent at every period of his life.”[1471] If we keep to the earlier and more “liberal” side of his “Evangelical conception of faith,” then indeed the trusting and confident assumption of such a relationship with Christ would certainly be “decisive in the question whether a man was a believer or not, and Luther himself frequently used this criterion, for instance, when he answers as follows the question: Who is a member of the Church and whom must one regard as a dear brother in Christ: ‘All who confess Christ as sent by God the Father in order to reconcile us by His death and to obtain grace for us’; or again elsewhere: ‘All those who cling to Christ alone and confess Him in faith,’ or, yet again: All those ‘who seek the Lord with all their heart and soul, and trust only in God’s mercy.’[1472] In such utterances we have the purely religious conception of Evangelical faith clearly summarised.” (Cp. above, vol. iii., p. 13.)

Agreeably with this conception of faith, some Protestants have contended that Luther should have been much more broad-minded with regard to doubts and to doctrines which differed from his own; his opposition to other views, notably to those of the Zwinglians, brought him, however, to another conception of faith, to one more closely related to the Catholic theory. According to Catholic doctrine, faith is a firm assent to all that God has revealed and the Church proposes for belief. It is made up of many articles, not one of which can be set aside without injury to the whole. Luther, so we are told, “owing to his controversy with Zwingli, ran the risk of exchanging his conception of faith for this one [the Catholic one], according to which faith is the acceptance of a whole series of articles of faith.”

In reality he did not merely “run the risk” of reaching such a doctrine; he had, all along, even in earlier days, been moving on these same lines, albeit in contradiction with himself. It was in fact nothing altogether new when he wrote in the Articles of Schwabach: “Such a Church is nothing else than the faithful in Christ, who believe, hold and teach the above Articles.”[1473] The faith for which he wishes to stand always comprised the contents of the oldest Creeds, and he prefers to close his eyes to the fact that they were really undermined by his other propositions. By these articles he is determined to abide. Hence it is hardly fair to appeal to him in favour of their abrogation, and any such appeal would only serve to emphasise his self-contradiction. Luther himself, when dealing with opponents, frequently speaks of the breaking of a single link as being sufficient to make the whole chain fall apart. “All or nothing” was his cry, viz. the very same as Catholics had used against his own innovations. In short, in his “two-sidedness,” he, quite generally, seeks a sure foothold against difficulties from within and from without in the principle of authority in its widest meaning, and, when trying to safeguard the Apostles’ Creed and the “œcumenical symbols,” he appeals expressly to the Catholic past. He says that by thus vindicating the Apostles’ Creed and that of Nicæa he wished to show that he “was true to the rightful, Christian Church, which had retained them till that day.”[1474] The Fathers preserved them and, as in the case of the Athanasian Creed, supplemented and enlarged the traditional formulas, the better to counter heretics; Luther is even willing to accept new terms not found in Scripture, but coined by the Church, such as “peccatum originale” or “consubstantialis” ὁμοούσιος,[1475] since they might profitably be employed against false teachers.

Protestant Objections to Luther’s so-called “Formal Principle.”

“It is not for us to tone down or conceal the contradictions which present themselves,” writes a Protestant theologian who has made Luther’s attitude towards Scripture the subject of particular study. “... Even judged by the standard of his own day Luther does not display that uniformity which we are entitled to expect.... The psychological motives in particular are very involved and spring from different sources. The very fact that throughout his life he exhibited a certain obstinacy and violence towards both himself and others, must render doubtful any attempt to trace everything back to a single source. Obstinacy always points to contradictions.” This author goes so far as to say: “We might almost give vent to the paradox, that only in these contradictions is uniformity apparent; such a proposition would, however, hold good only before the court of psychology.” “To-day it is not possible to embrace Luther’s view in its entirety.”[1476]

In an historical account of Luther’s teaching (and it is in this that most Protestant scholars are interested) we must, as we advance, ever keep in view Luther’s whole individuality with all its warring elements. The difficulty thus presented to our becoming better acquainted with his views is, however, apparent from the words already quoted from one of Luther’s biographers concerning Luther’s wealth of ideas, which also, to some extent, apply even to his statements on dogma: “Every word Luther utters plays in a hundred lights and every eye meets with a different radiance which it would gladly fix.”[1477]

In spite of the difficulties arising from this character of the Wittenberg Doctor, early orthodox Lutheranism taught that he had set up the “sola scriptura” as the “formal principle” of the new doctrine. According to eminent authorities in modern Protestantism, however, this formal principle was stillborn; it was never capable in practice of supporting an edifice of doctrine, still less of forming a community of believers. Hence the tendency has been to make it subservient to the “Evangelical” understanding of the Bible.

Thus F. Kropatscheck, the author of the learned work “Das Schriftprinzip der lutherischen Kirche” (1904), says candidly, “that the formal principle of Protestantism [Scripture only] does not suffice in itself as a foundation for the true Christian life whether of the individual or of a community.” “Where the Evangelical content is lacking, the formal principle does not rise above sterile criticism.”[1478]

Kropatscheck’s examination of the mediæval views on Scripture led him moreover to recognise, that, in theory at least, the Bible always occupied its due place of honour; its content was, however, so he fancies, not understood until Luther rediscovered it as the Gospel of the “forgiveness of sins through Christ.”[1479] So far, according to him, did esteem for Scripture as the Word of God go in the Middle Ages, that he even ventures to characterise the formula “sola scriptura” as “Catholic commonplace”;[1480] this, however, he can only have intended in the sense in which it was read and supplemented by another Protestant theologian: “In practice this did not exclude the interpretation of Scripture on the lines of tradition.”[1481] “The so-called formal principle,” the above work goes on to say, with quite remarkable fairness to the past, “was much more utilised in the Middle Ages than popular accounts would lead us to suppose. To the Reformation we owe neither the formula (‘sola scriptura’) nor the insisting on the literal sense, nor the theory of inspiration, nor scarcely anything else demanded on the score of pure scriptural teaching.”[1482] “Almost all” the qualities attributed to Holy Scripture in the early, orthodox days of Protestantism “are already to be met with in the Middle Ages.”[1483]

In the same work Kropatscheck rightly sums up the teaching on the inspiration of the canonical books, of St. Thomas Aquinas, the principal exponent of the mediæval biblical teaching, doing so in a couple of sentences the clearness and conclusiveness of which contrast strangely with the new doctrine: “The effect of inspiration,” according to this Doctor of the Church, implies, negatively, preservation from error, positively, an enlightenment, both for the perception of supernatural truth and for the right judging of natural verities. Beyond this, a certain impulse from on high was needed to move the sacred scribes to write the burden of their message.[1484]

That in the past the doctrine of interpretation was bound up with the doctrine of inspiration, is, according to the statements of another Protestant writer, P. Drews,[1485] expressed as follows by the Catholic voice of Willibald Pirkheimer: “We should have to look on ourselves as reprobate were we to despise even one syllable of Holy Scripture, for we know and firmly believe that our salvation rests solely and entirely on the Gospel. Hence we have it daily in our hands and read it and regard it as the guide of our lives. But no one can blame us if we place greater reliance on the interpretation of the holy, ancient Fathers than on some garbled account of Holy Scripture, since it is, alas, daily evident that there are as many different readings of the Word of God as there are men. Herein lies the source of all the evils and disorders, viz. that every fool would expound Scripture, needless to say, to his own advantage.”[1486]

Protestant theologians have recently been diligent in studying Luther’s teaching on the Bible. The conclusions arrived at by O. Scheel, who severely criticises Luther, have several times been quoted in this work. K. Thimme, in a scholarly work entitled “Luthers Stellung zur Heiligen Schrift,”[1487] has pointed out that Luther, who “affirms the existence of real inaccuracies in Holy Scripture,” nevertheless, in the very year that he expressed contempt for certain books of the New Testament, loudly demanded “the firmest belief (‘firmissime credatur’), that nothing erroneous is contained in the canonical books.”[1488]

A. Galley, a theologian to whom it fell to review the book, declared, that, unfortunately, in spite of this and other essays on the subject, no sure and decisive judgment on Luther’s attitude towards Holy Scripture had yet been arrived at.[1489]—Does this not, perhaps, amount to saying that any ultimate verdict of harmony, truth and absence of contradictions is out of the question?

R. Seeberg in one work emphasises “Luther’s independent and critical attitude towards the books of the Old and New Testament Canon.” “Scripture is to be believed not on the external authority of the Church but because it is revelation tested by experience.... Scripture was to him the standard, test and measure of all ecclesiastical doctrine, but this it was as the expression of the experienced revelation of God.”[1490]

This statement Seeberg further explains elsewhere: “Though, in his controversies, Luther pits Scripture as the ‘Divine law’ against all mere ecclesiastical law [viz. the Church’s dogma], yet he regarded it as authoritative simply in so far as it was the original, vigorous witness to Christ and His salvation. Considered in this light, Scripture, however, cannot be put side by side with justifying faith as the second principle of Protestantism. The essential and fundamental thought is faith.”—What Seeberg here says is quietly aimed at the later, orthodox, Lutheran theologians who took from Luther the so-called formal principle of Protestantism, viz. the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the Bible. “How is it possible, in view of Luther’s reprobation of certain things in the Bible ... and his admission that it contained mistakes, to imagine any verbal inspiration?”[1491]

Seeberg has also a remarkable account of Luther’s views on the relation to Scripture of that faith which in reality is based on inward experience: “The specific content of Scripture” is “Christ, His office and kingdom.” To this content it is that faith bears witness by inward experience (see above, p. 404 f.). For faith is “the recognition by the heart of the Almighty love revealed to us in God.... This recognition involves also the certainty that I am in the Grace of God.” “The truth of Scripture is something demonstrated inwardly,” etc. “The external, legal founding of doctrine upon dogma is thus set aside, and an end is made of the ancient canon of Vincent of Lerins. Even the legal [dogmatic] application of Scripture is in principle done away with.” Of the extent to which Luther carried out these principles the author says in conclusion: “That his practice was not always exemplary and devoid of contradiction can merely be hinted at here.”[1492]

It would have been better to say straight away that no non-contradictory use of contradictory principles was possible.

Dealing with a work by K. Eger (“Luthers Auslegung des Alten Testamentes”), W. Köhler said: “Any interpretation not limited by practical considerations ... was quite unknown to Luther, hence we must not seek such a thing in him.... Our best plan is to break with Luther’s principle of interpretation.” And, before this: “Luther’s principle of interpretation is everywhere the ‘fides,’ and what Luther has to offer in the way of sober, ‘historical’ interpretation is no growth of his own garden but a fruit of Humanism.... Just as the Schoolmen found their theology in the Old Testament, so he did his.”[1493]

Luther’s method of interpretation, however, presents much that calls for closer examination.

2. Luther as a Bible-Expositor

“Luther in his quality of Bible-expositor is one of the most extraordinary and puzzling figures in the domain of religious psychology.”[1494]

Some Characteristics of Luther’s Exegesis.

It is true that some of Luther’s principles of exegesis are excellent, and that he has a better perception than many of his predecessors of the need of first ascertaining the literal sense, and, for this purpose, of studying languages. He is aware that the fourfold sense of Holy Scripture, so often wrongly appealed to, must retire before the literal meaning, and that we must ever seek what the sacred writer really and obviously meant, in whatever dress we find his ideas clothed. Some quite excellent observations occur in his works on the danger of having recourse to allegorical interpretations and of not taking the text literally.

Luther himself, it is true, in his earlier postils, frequently makes use of the allegory so dear to mediæval writers, often investing what he says in poetic and fantastic forms. Later on, however, he grew more cautious. Here again the abuse of allegory by the fanatics had its effect. In addition to this his constant efforts to prove his doctrine against theological gainsayers within and without his camp, forced him in his arguments to use the literal sense of the Bible, or at least what he considered such. The advantages of his German translation of the Bible will be spoken of elsewhere (see vol. v., xxxiv., 3).

Yet he lacked one thing essentially required of an expositor, viz. theological impartiality, nor was he fair to those means by which the Church’s interpreters were guided in determining the sense of Scripture.

Concerning the latter, it is enough to remember how lightheartedly he threw overboard the interpretation of the whole of the Christian past. His wantonness, which led him to esteem as of no account all the expositions and teachings of previous ages, deprived his exegesis of much help and also of any stable foundation. Even considered from the merely natural standpoint, real progress in religious knowledge must surely be made quietly and without any sudden break with what has already been won by the best minds by dint of diligent labour.

The rock on which Luther suffered shipwreck was however above all his complete lack of impartiality. In his work as expositor his concern was not to do homage to the truth in whatever shape he might encounter it in the texts he was interpreting, but to introduce into the texts his own ideas. Bearing in mind his controversy and his natural temperament, this cannot, however, surprise us. Hence it is not necessary to take too tragically the tricks he occasionally plays with Bible texts. Some of these have been most painstakingly examined,[1495] and, indeed, it was not without its advantages to have the general complaints raised thus verified in individual instances. Thanks to his investigations Döllinger was able to write: “False interpretations of the most obvious and arbitrary kind are quite the usual thing in his polemics. It would hardly be possible to carry this further than he did in his writings against Erasmus in the instances quoted even by Planck. Indeed, examples of utter wilfulness and violence to the text can be adduced in great number from his writings.” Most frequently, as Döllinger points out, “his interpretation is false, because he foists his own peculiar ideas on the biblical passages, ideas which on his own admission he reached not by a calm and dispassionate study of the Bible, but under conditions of painful mental disturbance and anxiety of conscience.” To this he was urged by the unrest certain Bible-sayings excited in him; in such cases, as Döllinger remarks, he knew how “to pacify his exegetical conscience by telling himself, that all this disquiet was merely a temptation of the devil, who wanted to puzzle him with passages from Scripture and thus drive him to despair.”[1496]

The whole of his exegesis is pervaded by his doctrine of Justification. In this sense he says in the preface to Galatians, the largest of his exegetico-dogmatic works: “Within me this one article of faith in Christ reigns supreme. Day and night all my ideas on theology spring from it and return thereto.”[1497]

“The article of Justification,” he declares, in a disputation in 1537, “is the master and prince, the lord, regent and judge of every form of doctrine, which preserves and rules all ecclesiastical knowledge and exalts our consciousness before God.”[1498]

Two years before this (1535) he expressed himself still more strongly in a disputation: “Scripture is not to be understood against, but for, Christ. Hence it must either be made to apply to Him—or not be regarded as true Scripture at all.”[1499]

His highly vaunted idea of Justification he sought to apply first and foremost to those books or passages of the Bible which, as he expressed it, “preach Christ.” Though giving the first place in the canonical regard to those writings where Christ is most strongly and fully preached and but scant favour (when he does not reject them entirely) to those where this is not the case, he yet contrives to introduce his own particular Christ into many parts of Scripture which really say nothing about Him. Everything that redounds to the honour of Christ, i.e. to the exaltation of His work of grace in man, as Luther understood it, must be forced into Scripture, while everything that tends to assert man’s powers and the need of his co-operation must be expunged, since Christ cannot arrive at His right which He has from the Father except through the utter helplessness of man. The Bible must nowhere know of any inner righteousness on man’s part that is of any value in God’s sight; it must never place on the lips of Christ any demand, any praise or reward for human effort. All sacred utterances which contradict this are, so he says, in spite of his preference for the literal sense, not to be taken literally. Thus, when the Bible says man shall, it does not follow that he can; God rather wishes thereby to convince man of his helplessness; nay, what is said in this connection of man and his works really applies to Christ, Who has done everything for us and makes it all ours by faith.[1500]

“There were times in his life when the antithesis between faith and works so dominated him and filled his mind, that the whole Bible seemed to him to have been written simply to illustrate and emphasise this doctrine of Justification.”[1501]

Two portions of Holy Scripture, viz. the Epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians, according to him, hold the first place in their eulogy of Christ, by their recommendation of faith in Him alone. Hence “all questions and all the more obscure passages of Scripture are to be solved and explained by these two epistles.”[1502] If, in the Bible, good works are extolled or almsgiving praised, the word “fide” must always be understood, since the meaning cannot but be that such works are profitable by faith.[1503]

In the case of the Evangelists, Matthew and Luke in particular, we must expound their writings in accordance with the doctrine of Justification through Christ and man’s own helplessness. “Scripture must be interpreted according to this article.... When Matthew and Luke speak of good works, they are to be understood and judged according to this rule.”[1504]

Thus, in all questions of exegesis the “preaching of Christ” is conclusive. We must, first of all, see whether each book commonly reckoned to form part of the Bible really “preaches Christ,” and, where this is so, the same thoughts will control everything else.[1505]

In the question of the relation of faith to the interpretation of Scripture, Luther hobbles strangely. On the one hand the Bible is to be interpreted strictly according to faith, on the other, faith is to be won solely from the Bible. The former proposition he thus explains in a sermon: It is a command that the interpretation of Scripture must “rhyme with faith and not teach anything contrary to or differing from what faith teaches.” True faith, however, is that which is directed against the power of works, so that any interpretation of the Bible which contradicts this is wrong. Whatever teaches us “to have a good conscience towards God, except by faith alone and without any works, neither resembles nor rhymes with faith.”[1506] Of the content of faith we are assured above all by inward experience and the Spirit. It is indeed on the “feeling and sentiment” that, in the case of faith, i.e. the acceptance of the Gospel message of salvation, Luther lays the chief stress.[1507] “If you feel it not, you have not the faith, the Word merely rings in your ears and hovers on your lips like foam on water.”[1508]

Luther is just as determined in proving faith from Scripture as he is in making Scripture subservient to and dependent on faith. “Without Scripture faith soon goes,” he exclaims after labouring to bring forward arguments from the Bible in support of the new faith in Christ.[1509] “Whatever is advanced without being attested by Scripture or a revelation need not be believed.”[1510] “To this wine no water must be added”;[1511] to this sun no lantern must be held up![1512] “You must take your stand on a plain, clear and strong word of Scripture, which will then be your support.”[1513]

The worst of it is, as O. Scheel aptly remarks, that Luther pits his Christ against Scripture and thus makes the latter void.[1514]

On the one hand, according to Adolf Harnack, Luther, when making faith the rule of Bible interpretation, becomes a “mediæval exegete” and borrows from the past even his types and allegories. Yet he cuts himself adrift in the most decided fashion from the mediæval exegesis, “not merely when it is a question of Justification,” but even “in regard to such Scripture passages as contain nothing whatever about the doctrine of Justification and faith, or only alien matter.”[1515]

For instance, he finds righteousness by works condemned and faith exalted in the very first pages of the Bible; for Cain, his brother’s murderer, “clung to works and lost the faith,” that was his misfortune; whereas Abel held aloof “from free-will and the merit of works” and “kept the faith in a pure conscience.” “The same thing happened later with Isaac and Ismael, Jacob and Esau, and others.”—Yet, in spite of such condemnation of works, many passages, particularly in the New Testament, seem to tell in favour of works. This, however, is only due to the fact that at the time of the New Testament writers it was desirable to raise up a bulwark against any too great esteem for faith. Thus it was really not meant quite seriously; in the same way even he himself, so he says, had been obliged to oppose this excessive esteem for faith, because, in his day, and owing to his preaching, the people “wanted merely to believe, to the neglect of the power and fruit of faith” (in good actions).[1516]

Owing to his habit of ever reading the Bible through the glass of his doctrine of Justification, his handling of Rom. xi. 32 (in the Vulgate: “Conclusit Deus omnia in incredulitate ut omnium misereatur”) was such that Döllinger found in it no less than “three falsifications of the words of Paul.”[1517]

Luther’s marginal glosses to his translation of the Bible are open to plentiful objections, for their purpose is to recall the reader as often as possible to the basic theories of his doctrine.[1518]

Some Protestants have been exceedingly frank in characterising the strained relations often noticeable between Luther’s exegesis and true scholarship.

Friedrich Paulsen, in his “Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts,” when dealing with the demand made by the “exegesis of the Reformation,” viz. that the reader must cling to the plain text and letter of Scripture, says: “Luther by no means considered himself bound to the letter and the grammatical sense of the text of Scripture. Where the letter was in his favour, he indeed used it against others, the Swiss, for instance, but, where it was not, he nevertheless stands by his guns and knows what Scripture ought to have said. Everybody knows with what scant regard he handled certain books of Scripture, estimating their value according as they agreed more or less with his teaching, and even amending them a little when they failed to reach his standard or to present the pure doctrine of justification by faith ‘alone’ in a light sufficiently strong.... In order to understand Scripture it is necessary [according to Luther] to know beforehand what it teaches; Scripture is indeed the rule of doctrine, but, vice versa, doctrine is also the rule of Scripture which must be interpreted ‘ex analogia fidei.’”[1519]

Referring to Luther’s interpretation of the Epistle to the Romans, Adolf Hausrath pithily observes: “Luther read this Epistle to the Romans into everything and found it everywhere.” Though Hausrath makes haste to add that this was because “his personal experiences agreed with those of the Epistle to the Romans,” still, his reference to the psychological basis of the phenomenon is quite in place. “He had been led to draw from Scripture one basic principle which to him was the embodiment of truth, viz. Justification by Faith. That only which ran counter to this ‘faith alone’ was to be set aside.”[1520]

Luther’s Exegesis in the Light of His Early Development.

With the help of the newly published Commentary on Romans, written by Luther in his youth (vol. i., p. 184 ff.), we can trace the beginnings of his curious exegesis more easily than was possible before.

What we want first of all is a key to that more than human confidence which prompts the new teacher to blend in one his own interpretation and the actual text of the Bible and to say, “My word is the truth.” This key is to be found in his early history. It was then, in those youthful days when he began morbidly to brood over the mysteries of the Epistle to the Romans, all unable to grasp the profound thoughts it contained, that the phenomenon in question made its first appearance.

We must call to mind that the young and ardent University professor, though deficient in humility and in the capacity to assimilate the sublime teachings of the Epistle to the Romans, stood all the more under the spell of two misleading ideas which had long dominated him, viz. on the one hand, the supposed depth and transforming power of the knowledge of Scripture he had already acquired and, on the other, the need of assailing the self-righteous and hypocritical Little Saints and all excessive esteem for good works. In the latter respect the passages in Romans on works, faith and merit—of which he failed to see the real meaning—became dangerous rocks on which Luther’s earlier religious convictions suffered hopeless shipwreck. So greatly was he attracted and, as it were, fascinated by the light that seemed to him to stream in on his soul from this Epistle, that he came to see the same thing everywhere. Its suggestive power over him was all the greater because in his then pseudo-mystical train of thought he was fond of comparing himself to the Apostle and of fancying, that, as in that case so in his, inner self-annihilation would lead to his receiving similar favours from God. This self-annihilation in Luther’s case was, however, a morbid one.

Luther, in his younger days, had also been grievously tormented with thoughts on predestination. He now fancied, according to what he supposed was Paul’s teaching, that to abandon oneself in the hands of God, without will, strength or wish, was the sole means by which he and all other men could find tranquillity. Thus, on the strength of misunderstood inward experiences, he hailed the Epistle to the Romans and, a little later, the Epistle to the Galatians, as the only guide along the strange paths of his future exegesis.

His supposed “experiences of God” became the ruling power by which, thanks to an exegesis entirely new, he was to bring salvation to the whole of mankind.

Hitherto, in spite of all his diligence in the study of the Bible, any idea of upholding his own new interpretation against the existing doctrines of the Church had been altogether foreign to him. In his first manuscript notes and in the Commentary on the Psalms which has only recently come to light, likewise in his earlier sermons, he still looks at everything from the Catholic standpoint; the Church’s authority is still the appointed guardian and interpreter of Holy Scripture. There the Bible is to him unquestionably the divinely inspired book and the true Word of God, though it is, not the individual’s, but the Church’s duty to draw from its inexhaustible treasures arguments in her own defence and in refutation of the teaching of the heretics. To the teaching of Scripture and to the infallible interpretation of the Church based on the tradition of the Fathers, everyone, so he then held, must submit as Christ Himself had ordained.

Even then, however, he was already convinced that he had received an extraordinary call to deal with Holy Scripture. The very admiration of his fellow-monks for his familiarity with his red leather copy of the Bible, fostered the self-love of the youthful student of the Scriptures. This Staupitz increased by his incautious reference to the future “great Doctor,” and by his general treatment of Luther. The written Word of God in which the wide-awake and quick-witted monk felt himself at home more than any of his fellows quite evidently became so much his own peculiar domain, that, in his opinion, Bible scholarship was the only worthy form of theological learning and ruled every branch of Divine knowledge. He even went further, attributing all the corruption in the Church to “neglect of the Word,” i.e. to ignorance of and want of compliance with the Bible Word. On the strength of his accounted profounder knowledge of the “Word,” he also reproves the “holy-by-works.” Even previous to the lectures on Romans, his conviction of the antithesis between human works and Christ’s grace made him read everywhere Christ into Scripture; the Bible, so he says, must be taken to the well-spring, i.e. to the Cross of Christ, having done which we may then be “quite certain to catch” its true meaning. Before Luther’s day others in the Church had done the same, though within lawful limits. Among contemporary Humanists even Erasmus had insisted on Christ’s being made the centre of Scripture.[1521]

Widely as Luther, in his Commentary on Romans, already diverges from the Church’s interpretation of St. Paul regarding the doctrine of Justification, yet he still admits, at least in theory, the principle of authority both in the interpretation of the Bible and in general.[1522] He rejects without compunction all those heresies which deviate from the Church’s guidance. In practice, however, he sets himself above the teaching of the Fathers where-ever this runs counter to his views; St. Augustine is forced to witness in his favour even at the expense of the other representatives of tradition, and, as for mediæval scholasticism, it is treated as though it were not at all one of the links in the venerable chain of tradition. On the other hand, Luther allows his exegesis to be influenced by those later and less reputable exponents of scholasticism with whom alone he was acquainted.

On such lines as these did his exegesis of the Bible proceed; on the one hand there was his excessive regard for his own acquaintance with Scripture, and, on the other, his pseudo-mysticism leaning for its support on misunderstood interior revelations and illuminations. A certain sense of his vocation as the Columbus of the Bible ever accompanies him from that time forward.

This psychological condition manifests itself in utterances contained in the lectures on Romans and in later works.

“Here,” so he writes in the lectures, “a great stride has been made towards the right interpretation of Holy Scripture, by understanding it all as bearing on Christ ... even when the surface-sense of the letter does not require it.”[1523] “All Scripture deals everywhere with Christ alone.”[1524] “All this is said, written or done that human presumption may be humbled and the grace of God exalted.”[1525] He is ever reading his own thoughts into the oftentimes obscure words of St. Paul, though, that he is so doing is evident neither to his hearers nor to himself. That same eloquence and wealth of imagery are to be found here which are to characterise his later expositions. “Quite unmistakably his language, thought and imagery throughout the work is that of the mystic,” remarks the editor of the Commentary. “How much Tauler—whom Luther extols so highly, even when as yet he was so little acquainted with him—has taken possession of Luther’s mind and influences his language, would be clear from the Commentary on Romans, even were Tauler’s name not mentioned in it.”[1526]

With the mental attitude assumed quite early in his career the scant regard for Humanism and philosophy he evinces in this Commentary well agrees; further, his use of the Bible as a whip with which to lash unsparingly the abuses rampant in the Church, another peculiarity which was to remain in his treatment of Scripture. The better to appreciate his first attempts at exegesis we may recall, that, even then, he was concerned for the text and its purity, and that, no sooner was Erasmus’s Greek edition of the New Testament published, than Luther, who had now reached chapter ix. of the Epistle, began to use it for his lectures.[1527]

That Luther’s first attempts in the exegetical field were so successful was in great part due to his personal gifts, to his eloquence and to his frankness. Oldecop, a pupil of his, who remained true to the Church, wrote as an old man, that, being as he was then twenty-two years of age, he “had taken pleasure in attending Martin’s lectures.”[1528] The lectures on Romans commenced immediately after Oldecop’s matriculation. Christopher Scheurl, the Humanist Professor of Law, reckoned the new exegete among the best of the Wittenberg theologians and said: “Martin Luther, the Augustinian, expounds St. Paul’s Epistles with marvellous talent.”[1529]

In the matter of private interpretation as against the Church’s, in these earliest exegetical efforts, he remained, outwardly at least, true to the traditional standpoint, until, little by little, he forsook it, as already described (above, p. 387 ff.). Even his academic Theses of Sept., 1517 (“Against the Theology of the Schools”), based though they were on a misapprehension of Scripture, conclude with the assurance, that, “throughout, he neither intended nor had said anything contrary to the Church or at variance with her doctrines.”[1530]—Then, however, with startling suddenness the change set in.

When, after the storm aroused by the publication of the Indulgence Theses, he wrote his German “Sermon von dem Ablass und Gnade,”[1531] he appealed in it repeatedly to the Bible as against the “new teachers,” i.e. the Schoolmen, and indeed in as confident a manner as though he alone were learned in Scripture. He says on the first page: “This I say: That it cannot be proved from any Scripture, etc. Much should I like to hear anyone who can testify to the contrary in spite of the fact that some doctors have thought so.” And at the end he sums up as follows: “On these points I have no doubt, and they have sufficient warrant in Scripture. Therefore you too should have no doubt and send the Scholastic doctors about their business!” Shortly before this, in a letter about the Scholastic theologians of his day, particularly those of Leipzig, he declares: “I could almost swear that they understand not a single chapter of the Gospel or Bible.”[1532] He was, however, greatly cheered to hear that, thanks to his new interpretation of the Bible, prelates, as well as the burghers of Wittenberg, were all saying “that formerly they had neither known nor heard anything of Christ or of His Gospel.”[1533]

After Tetzel had attacked his Sermon and accused Luther of falsifying the sacred text, and of cherishing heretical opinions, the latter indited his “Eyn Freiheyt dess Sermons Bepstlichen Ablass und Gnad belangend,” where he emphasises even more strongly and pathetically the supremacy of Holy Scripture over all outward authority: “Even though all these and a thousand others of the holiest of doctors had held this or that, yet their opinion is of no account compared with a single verse of Holy Writ.... They are not in the least to be believed, because the Scripture says: The Word of God no one may set aside or alter.”[1534]

Carlstadt, whom Luther himself had instructed, outdid his master and advocated entire freedom for the private interpretation of Scripture before Luther could make up his mind to do this. He did not shrink from making his own the following defiant Thesis: “The text of the Bible does not take precedence merely of one or several Doctors of the Church, but even of the authority of the whole Church.”[1535] It was only after Luther, thanks to his obstinacy and curious methods of reasoning, had extricated himself from his examination at Augsburg, and fled, that he admitted in the statements already given (p. 388) that the word of Scripture was to be set in the first place, and, that, in its interpretation, no account need be made of ecclesiastical authority.[1536] This prelude to Luther’s new exegetical standpoint, more particularly towards the end, was marked by much fear, doubt and anxiety of conscience. He was worried, to such an extent that his “heart quaked for fear,” by a number of Scripture passages and still more by the question: Could the Author of Scripture hitherto have really left His work open to such dire misunderstanding?