Chapter XXXIV

END OF LUTHER’S LITERARY LABOURS. THE WHOLE REVIEWED

1. Towards a Christianity void of Dogma. Protestant Opinions

With the concluding years of Luther’s life we reach a point whence may be undertaken with advantage a survey of the character of his theological and literary labours from several sides from which we have not as yet had opportunity to approach them.

We naturally turn first of all to the religious content of his literary life-work; here it may be advisable to hear what Protestant theologians have to say.

These theologians will tell us how many of the olden dogmas Luther, explicitly or implicitly, relinquishes, and whether and how he undermines the very idea of faith as known to Christians of old; we shall also have to consider the Protestant strictures which assert that the doctrines, which he either retained or set up for the first time, were fraught with so much that was illogical that they may be said to bear within them the seeds of dissolution. The conclusions reached will show whether or not he was actually heading for a “Christianity void of dogma.”

(a) Protestant Critics on Luther’s Abandonment of Individual Christian Dogmas and of the Olden Conception of Faith

It is hard to deny that a certain amount of truth lurks in the contention of a certain modern school of Protestant thought which insists that Luther practically made an end of “the old, dogmatic Christianity.”[1705] Luther did not, of course, look so far ahead, nor were the consequences of his own action at all clear to him, and when Catholics took pains to point them out he was not slow to repel them with the utmost indignation. Still, logic is inexorable in demanding its rights.[1706]

Here we are happily able to state the case almost entirely in the words of Protestant theologians of the modern school, such as, for instance, Adolf Harnack.

“The acknowledged authorities on dogma,” says Harnack, speaking of Luther’s attitude towards the pillars of the Church’s teaching, “have been torn down, and thereby dogma itself, qua dogma, i.e. the unfailing teaching institution ordained by the Holy Ghost, has been done away with.... The revision has been extended even beyond the second century of the Church’s history and up to its very beginnings, and has everywhere been carried out radically. An end has been made of that history of dogma which started in the age of the apologists, nay, of the Apostolic Fathers.”[1707] Harnack therefore, in his detailed work on the history of dogma, refrained from dealing with any theologians later than Luther, instead of following the usual course among Protestant authors, and giving an account of the development of doctrine in later Protestantism and among Luther’s followers. He pertinently asked: “How can there be in Protestantism any history of dogma after Luther’s Prefaces to the New Testament and his great reformation writings?”[1708]

Addressing the representatives of Lutheran “dogmatic theology,” Harnack says: “Luther’s reformation created a new point of departure for the development of the Christian belief in the Word of God”; “it set aside every form of infallibility that might have offered an outward assurance for one’s belief, the Church’s infallible organisation and infallible tradition and the infallible code of Scripture. Thus an end was made of the conception of Christianity from which dogma had sprung, viz. the Christian faith, the sure knowledge of the final causes of all things and thus of the whole Divine scheme of salvation. Christian faith has now become merely a firm assurance of receiving forgiveness of sins from God, as the Father of Jesus Christ, and of living under Him in His kingdom. This at the same time spells the ruin of any infallible dogma; for how can any dogma be unchangeable and authentic, thought out and formulated as it was by finite men, living in sin, and devoid of every outward guarantee?” If, nevertheless, Luther accepted and maintained certain aspects of ancient dogma, he did so, not as establishing “side by side with faith a law of faith based on particular outward promises,” but rather “from his unshaken conviction that much of this dogma corresponded exactly with the Gospel or Word of God, and that this correspondence was self-evident”; “as dogma, it did not constitute a rule.”[1709]

In some respects, for instance in this very matter, what Harnack says stands in need of correction. He is at times too fond of making out his own Christianity without dogma to have been also that of Luther. We just heard him say that the remnant of olden dogma which Luther preserved, “as dogma, did not constitute a rule.” He would, however, have been nearer the truth in saying that, logically, as dogma, it ought not to have constituted a rule. There can be no doubt that Luther—as will be shown below—insists, though in contradiction with other “basic ideas and with the spirit of his reformation,” that the Christian verities which he leaves standing must be embraced as revealed articles of the Christian belief and indubitable truths of faith. Even where he does not insist upon this he still takes it for granted that faith in the whole of revelation (“fides historica”) precedes that faith which consists in the assurance of the forgiveness of sins. Even Harnack has to admit, that, with Luther, “dogma qua dogma, remains to some extent in force” owing “to the logic of things.”[1710]

Luther, according to another passage in Harnack, “under the pressure of circumstances” and the storms raised against him by the fanatics and the Anabaptists, was drawn into a dogmatising current of which the issue was the Augsburg Confession. To the question: Did Luther’s reformation do away with the ancient dogma? we must reply, that, at least, it “demolished its foundation—as indeed our Catholic opponents rightly object against us—that it was a mighty principle rather than a new doctrine, and that its subsequent history through the age of Orthodoxy, Pietism and Rationalism down to the present day is less a falling away than a natural development.”[1711]

Even before Harnack’s day this was virtually the standpoint of some of the best Protestant judges. It had been perceived long before that the purely Evangelical theory led much further from the ancient dogmas than Protestant orthodoxy was disposed to admit. Even according to so conservative a theologian as Johann August Neander, “the spirit of the Reformation did not at once attain to a clear consciousness of itself”; Luther indeed, even here, “had reached the consciousness of the pure Evangelical belief, thanks to the principle of a faith which is a free outgrowth of the Divine power within; yet, owing to the controversies on the Supper and to the Peasant War, this clear consciousness again became eclipsed.”[1712] Neander finds the best statement of Luther’s new ideas in those works which are most radically opposed to the traditional teaching of the Church of old. Albert Ritschl, the well-known leader of the free Protestant school, likewise declared: “The Lutheran theory of life has not remained true to itself; it has been hemmed in and dulled by the stress laid on objective dogma. The pure doctrine as taught in the schools is in reality merely a passing, not the final, form of Protestantism.”[1713]

All these critics, Harnack in particular, though blaming Luther for not drawing the right conclusions, are nevertheless at one in their outspoken admiration of the powerful thinker and brave spokesman of the new belief, and particularly of those theses of his which approach most closely their own ideal of an unfettered theology. In their opinion Luther is to remain the hero of yore, though his garb and attitude will no longer be the same as those to which Protestantism had previously been accustomed. It is perhaps not superfluous to mention this because otherwise the strong things some of the critics say might, taken together, give the impression that their main aim and endeavour was to decry Luther. Probably enough Harnack and his friends failed to foresee how unfavourable a view their censures, taken in the lump, might produce of Luther’s person and work. Harnack, however, in one passage, pays a strange tribute to Luther’s conservatism, one, no doubt, which would appeal to the Reformer’s more old-fashioned friends. He points out, that, “we owe it to him, that, even to the present day, these formularies [the olden creeds] are still in Protestantism a living power”; nay, such is his ignorance of the state of things in Catholicism, that he is convinced that it is only in Protestantism that these creeds still “live,” whereas, “in the Roman Church, they are but a dead and obsolete heirloom”; Luther, according to one bold dictum of Harnack’s, was really “the restorer of ancient dogma.”[1714]

Among the olden doctrines thrown over by Luther his Protestant critics rightly instance the Canon of Scripture and the right of the Church to interpret the Bible. They corroborate strikingly from Luther’s writings the results which we reached above,[1715] a circumstance which may surprise Protestant readers.

If, according to Luther, the doctrine of the oldest confessions of faith are only to be retained because they can be directly proved from the Bible, then the Bible itself with all its books, so such Protestants argue, must stand firm and inviolable. Now, awkwardly enough, Luther himself saps the authority of the Canon.

“If the attitude is justified which Luther takes up in his famous Prefaces to the various books of the New Testament,” says Harnack (cp. prefaces to the Epistle of James, to the Epistle to the Hebrews and to the Apocalypse), “then an end is made of the infallible Canon of Scripture. It is here of the utmost importance historically, though in itself a matter of indifference, that we find Luther, especially after the controversy on the Supper, making statements to the effect that every letter of Scripture is fundamental to the Christian faith; the flagrant contradiction involved in the assertion that a thing holds and at the same time does not hold can only be solved by saying that it does not. The same follows from Luther’s views on faith, for, according to him, this is produced by the Holy Ghost through the preaching of the Word of God. To-day too, all Protestants are agreed that historical criticism of Scripture is not unevangelical, though this unanimity of opinion extends only as far as the ‘principle,’ and many refuse to carry it out in practice.”[1716]—“Luther, at the very time when he was waging so brave a war against the authority of the Councils, also opposed Scriptural infallibility, and, indeed, how could he do otherwise?... There can be no doubt that Luther’s attitude towards the New Testament, as we find it set forth in the Prefaces and in one or two other passages, is the correct one, i.e. that which really tallies with his belief.”[1717]

As F. Loofs points out, Luther leaves us without any outward guarantee for the authority of the Canon of the Bible.[1718] Loofs quotes, for instance, Luther’s saying: “Hence God must tell you within your heart: This is God’s Word.”[1719] “Luther’s criticism,” the same writer says, “did not spare even those books which he allowed to be truly prophetic or apostolic.... He frankly admitted the human element in Scripture.”[1720]

If Luther’s fundamental opposition to the faith once delivered is already apparent from his criticism of the Bible, still more is this the case when we come to look into the freedom he allowed in the interpretation of the sense of the Bible.

As Harnack puts it: In Luther’s view “the Church is based on something which every Christian, no matter how humble, can see and test, viz. on the Word of God as apprehended by pure reason. This, of course, was tantamount to a claim to ascertain the true verbal sense of Holy Scripture.... But Luther never foresaw how far this rule would lead.”[1721]

Luther himself often put his principle to such arbitrary usage as to prove a warning to others (above, vol. iv., pp. 406 f., 418 f.), and to exclude the possibility of any settled dogma. “The flagrant contradiction,” says Harnack, “into which he was led by criticising the Bible whilst all the time holding the idea he did about its inspiration, he contrived to explain away by reading the Evangel itself into texts which presented a difficulty.”[1722] “In Holy Scripture, the infallible authority, only that was to be found, which on other grounds was already established as the true doctrine.”[1723]

Hence in the matter of the Bible, so Harnack has it, “Criticism, in order to be according to Luther’s mind, would have to go against him in the interests of faith.”[1724]

Luther’s abandonment of the Church’s standpoint with regard to the Bible is closely bound up with his renunciation of the Church’s teaching office, of the hierarchy and of all respect for tradition. This meant, as modern Protestant critics admit, the destruction of the whole theory of tradition and, in fact, of all ecclesiastical authority, though, on Harnack’s own admission, ancient Church writers, especially “subsequent to Irenæus,” rely much on such authority.

“Luther was antagonistic to all these authorities,” says the same scholar, “to the infallibility of Church, Pope, and Councils, to every constitutional right of the Church to pronounce on the truth and, on principle, to all the doctrinal formularies of the past.”[1725] His later writing: “Von den Conciliis,” etc. (1539) proves this.

Nor have we yet exhausted the list of grievances against Luther. Not only did he forsake the ancient teaching on justification, merit and works, but he even declared war on human free will, though belief in its existence is a truth of natural philosophy and though the Church had ever held it in the highest esteem. He put aside in its primitive form the basic dogma of original sin. The doctrine of actual sin and its distinction into mortal and venial found no favour with him,[1726] nor did the related doctrine of the existence of a purgatory. He completely destroyed the teaching of antiquity on Grace by his new discovery of the law of absolute necessity which rules all things, not excluding even the actions of the human mind and heart; according to Luther “Grace is the fatherly disposition of God towards us, Who for Christ’s sake calls sinful man to Him, accepts him and wins his confidence through faith in the Christus passus.”[1727] This fatherly disposition of God no man can ever in the least resist if destined by the Divine Omnipotence to receive the faith; those, however, who are not numbered among the elect, know not any such invitation, or rather constraint, for the secret Will of God unfailingly dooms them to damnation.[1728]

After giving the above definition of Grace, Harnack asks, “What room then is there for a Sacrament?” For Catholics the Sacraments were pillars of the Church’s life and of her teaching. With them Luther was perfectly willing to dispense.

“He not only strove,” says Harnack, “to break away completely from the ancient or mediaeval conception, but he actually brought it to nought by his doctrine of the one sacrament, which is the Word.”[1729] The Sacraments being to him a “peculiar form of the saving Word of God, viz. of the realisation of the ‘promissio Dei,’ he reduces them to two (three), or, indeed, to one, viz. the Word of God. He showed that even the most enlightened Fathers had had but a dim notion of this so important matter.... Having practically laid the whole system in ruins, he rests again on the one, simple grand act, which is constantly being repeated in every Christian’s life, viz. the awakening of faith thanks to the ‘gratia.’”[1730]

Luther turned his back not only on the ancient teaching concerning the Sacraments, particularly the Sacrifice of the Mass, but also on the whole outward worship of the Church.

“His attitude towards Divine Worship in the Church was a radical one. Here too he destroyed not only the mediaeval tradition, but even that of the ancient Church such as we may trace it back right into the 2nd century. The public worship of the Church, to him, is nothing more than the worship of individuals united in time and place.... The priest and the sacrifice in the usual sense of the terms are done away with, and all worth is denied to those specific ecclesiastical actions which were formerly held to be both wholesome and necessary.” “The ‘divine service,’ particularly that of the Word, in which he nevertheless wished the congregation to take part,” “can have no other motive ... than to promote individual worship, for God deals with us only through the Word which is not tied up with any particular persons.”[1731] Hence public worship does no more than “edify faith through the preaching of the Divine Word and the common offering of prayer and praise.”[1732]

Of vast importance in this change and even more far-reaching in its consequences was Luther’s abrogation of the ancient conception of the Church. As bound up with it, he also harshly set aside the invocation of Saints, that vital element of the olden worship.

The ancient teaching on perfection had to make room for new theories, for it seemed to him to lay too much stress on man’s own works.[1733] And yet “we cannot but admit,” says Harnack, “that Luther’s efforts to create a new ideal of life were not characterised by any clear discrimination.” The reason may be “that the times were not yet ripe for it.” In those days of public stress “religion’s chief business was to bring consolation amidst the miseries of life. To heal the soul oppressed with sorrow for sin and to alleviate the evils in the world,” this was what was mainly aimed at.[1734] This, however, was scarcely to do justice to religion and to its sublime tasks.

According to Luther the Church had, even from the outset, given to human reason a larger sphere than was due to it. Even at the cradle of the Church Christian philosophy had taken her stand, and, with her torch of reason, had pointed out the road to faith. Luther, however, conceived “a distrust of reason itself not to be explained simply by his distrust of it as the main prop of self-righteousness. He grew hardened in his bold defiance of reason, surrendering himself to that suspicious Catholic [!] way of looking at things, which reveres the wisdom of God and sees the stamp of the divine truth in paradox and in the contradictio in adiecto.... No one, however, can despise reason and learning with impunity, and Luther himself was punished by the darkening of his own views on faith.”[1735] “That is a dangerous kind of theologism which fancies that the knowledge which comes from worldly education may simply be ignored. The reformers were too ready to cut themselves adrift from worldly culture where the latter seemed to trench on the domain of faith.... The Reformation buried beneath a mass of hatred and injustice much of the valuable learning the age possessed and thereby made itself responsible for the later crises of Protestantism.”[1736]

“Luther,” says Loofs, “by laying stress on that antithesis between human reason and the divine ‘foolishness,’ which was so intimately bound up with his own deepest and most fundamental views (and who ever thundered more loudly against the ‘Frau Hulda’ of natural reason, that ‘devil’s whore’ and ‘arch enemy of the faith’ than did Luther?), imposed on his following the old Catholic idea (which he himself had overthrown) of the verbal inspiration of the Canon, and did so so thoroughly that after-ages were unable to shake themselves free of it. Nay, by rightly proscribing any allegorical exegesis, he made the burden of this old Catholic heritage even more oppressive in Protestantism than it had ever been before.”[1737]

Depreciation of reason, had, in Luther’s case, a bad effect on his whole teaching concerning God. As far back as theology went this had formed the centre of religious discussion. The Fathers had by preference dwelt on questions which concerned God, His Oneness and Triunity, His attributes and His relations with the world and man. Luther, according to the admission of Protestant critics, introduced here certain arbitrary and very unfair limitations. It was his wish, as he frequently declares, that God should be meditated on only as Jesus Christ our Consoler and our Saviour. He has a strange and seemingly instinctive aversion to concerning himself with the Almighty Being, in Whom nevertheless “we live, and move, and are.” The Deus absconditus appals him. According to him it is impossible to “treat of Predestination without being crucified and suffering the pains of death, or without loss to ourselves and secret anger against God.” Predestination “determines in the first instance who is and who is not to believe, who is and who is not to be saved from sin”; of this Luther cannot speak without at the same time solemnly emphasising that it is only thanks to it that we can “hope to conquer sin,” as otherwise the devil, “as we know, would soon overpower us all.” Yet we ought not, like the “reprobate spirits,” “explore the abyss of Divine Providence,” because otherwise we shall either “be brought to despair or kick over the traces.” The old Adam must “have been put to death before being able to endure this and to drink the strong wine,” i.e. a man must first have learnt, like Luther, “to stake all in God,” and “defy” all things in Him.[1738]

Thus it comes about that Luther ladles out reproaches indiscriminately to the philosophers who occupy themselves with God as known to reason, and the theologians who pursue the supernatural knowledge of God.

“Often enough did Luther deride as a product of blind reason,” writes Harnack, “that knowledge of God, which instead of thinking of God in Christ alone, ‘sophistically’ enumerates His attributes and speculates on His will, viz. the whole ‘metaphysical’ doctrine of God.”[1739] If “God be considered apart from Christ,” then He appears, according to Luther, merely as the “terrible Judge from Whom we can await nothing but punishment.”[1740]

According to Luther, “there is, outside of Christ, no certainty concerning the Will of God”; for the secret Will of God threatens us with the dreadful sword of predestination to hell. Hence Harnack even goes so far as to say, that what is presupposed in Luther’s theories on the assurance of salvation is a belief “not in God in se—for God in se belongs to the Aristotelians—but rather in the God Whom the Holy Ghost reveals to the soul as manifest in Christ.”[1741]

“God in se” and “God quoad nos” are two different things. By establishing such a distinction Luther “sets himself at variance with all theology as it had existed since the days of the apologists; here his aversion to the olden dogma is even more evident than in his reprobation of certain of its parts. Again and again, whenever the occasion arises, he repudiates what the olden theology had said of God and Christ, of the Will and Attributes of God, of the two natures in Christ, etc., with the remark: ‘This He has in se. Thereupon he immediately proceeds, with the words ‘But, quoad nos,’ to introduce his own new view, which to him is the main thing, if not the whole.”[1742]

Such doctrines as have nothing to do with the justification of the sinner or the “confession of faith, as a personal experience,” recede so much into the background that Harnack feels justified in saying: “Though, under the formulas ‘God in se,’ ‘the Hidden God,’ ‘God’s Hidden Will,’ Luther left these old ideas standing, still they had practically ceased to exist as doctrines of faith. Of this there can be no doubt. That he did not throw them over completely is due to two facts, on the one hand to his impression that he found them in the Bible, and, on the other, to his never having systematically thought out the problems involved.”[1743] It must, however, be noted, that, as will be seen more clearly when we come to discuss Luther’s idea of faith, he was by no means ready to allow that such dogmas were not real “articles of faith.” This may be what leads Harnack here to say that they had “practically” ceased to exist as “actual articles of faith.”

In connection with the dogmas touching God it must not be lost to sight that Luther, by his doctrine of predestination, of man’s unfreedom and of the inevitability of all that occurs, really endangered, if indeed he did not actually destroy, the Church’s olden conception of God as the Highest and Most Perfect Being. The cruel God of absolute predestination to hell is no longer a God worthy of the name.

“Nor can it be gainsaid,” writes the Protestant theologian Arnold Taube, “that, given Luther’s idea of God and His Omnipotence, the negation of man’s free-will is a simple and natural consequence.” “Luther’s conception of God is at variance with the ethical personality of the God of Christianity, just as Schleiermacher’s whole pantheistic scheme of theology is useless in enabling us to grasp a religion so eminently moral as Christianity.” “Schleiermacher was quite logical in carrying to their consequences Luther’s ideas on predestination and free-will.” Luther’s idea of God, according to Taube, is simply “determinist.” “The negation [of free-will] can be escaped only by a theory of the Divine Omnipotence which regards God as controlling His own Power and thus as practically exercising restraint over Himself and limiting His Power. This, however, was not Luther’s theory, who takes the Divine Omnipotence to signify that which works all in all.”[1744]

To an outsider it sounds strange to hear Harnack and others affirm that Luther swept away all the positive doctrines of antiquity; no less strange is it to see Luther, the furious opponent of Catholicism, being made by men who call themselves his followers into an advocate of the Rationalism which they themselves profess. In the interests of Rationalism these theologians take as their watchword Wilhelm Herrmann’s dictum of Luther’s doctrine of penance: “We must strive to push ahead with what Luther began and left undone.” The least they demand is, that, as Ferdinand Kattenbusch puts it, Protestant theology should hold fast to the “earlier” Luther, to those days “when Luther’s genius was as yet unbroken.” In this wise they contrive to wrench away Luther from the foundations of that faith to which he still wished to remain true and which the “orthodox” at a later date claimed him to have ever retained.[1745]

It is well known how, following in Ritschl’s footsteps, Harnack’s ability, learning, and outspokenness have proved extremely awkward to the more conservative theologians. He “carried on Luther’s interrupted work,” declares Herrmann, and set up again in all its purity Luther’s early conception of faith against a theology which had been stifled in orthodoxy and pietism.[1746]

We must, however, in the light of Protestant criticism, examine a little more closely Luther’s attitude towards the ancient Christian conception of faith.

Starting first of all from faith subjectively considered and examining Luther’s doctrine of the personal appropriation of the content of faith, we immediately find ourselves brought face to face with his doctrine of justification, for he has scarcely anything to say of the faith of the individual save in so far as this faith operates justification. Here all the other truths to be believed tend to disappear from his purview and one only truth remains, viz.: Through Christ I am pleasing to God. It is no wonder if many of his followers, even to the present day, see in this doctrine of the certainty of having in Christ a Gracious God, the only dogma handed down by Luther. Does he not, for instance, in one of the most widely read passages of his works, viz., in the Preface to Romans in his translation of the New Testament, concisely define faith as a “daring and lively trust in the grace of God, so strong that one would be ready to die for it a thousand times over”? “Such a trust makes a man cheerful, defiant and light-hearted in his attitude towards God and all creatures; such is the working of the Holy Ghost by faith.” “Faith is the work of God in us whereby we are transformed and born anew in God.”[1747]

Again, if we take faith objectively, i.e. as the sum-total of revelation, then again, at least according to many passages, faith must be merged in the one consoling conviction that we receive the forgiveness of sins from God in Christ.

“The Reformation,” says Harnack quite rightly, regarded all the rest of dogma as little more than “a grand testimony to God, Who has sent Jesus Christ, His Son, to liberate us from sin, to save us and set us free. Finding this testimony in dogma, every other incentive to determine it more accurately disappeared.” It is, however, important to note, that “ancient dogma was not merely the witness of the Gospel to a Gracious God, to Christ the Saviour, and to the forgiveness of sins”; it comprised a number of other profound and far-reaching doctrines also binding upon all, “above all a certain knowledge of God and of the world, and a law of belief.” According to Harnack, however, “faith and this knowledge of God and law of belief were unguardedly jumbled up.” In short, “a conservative attitude towards olden dogma is not imposed on the Reformation by its principles.”[1748]

“The orthodoxy of the Luther-zealots of the 16th century had its basis in the reformers’ retention of a series of old Catholic presuppositions and dogmas which were really in disagreement with their own fundamental ideas.”[1749] “Thus,” proceeds Harnack, “the Reformation, i.e. the conception of the Evangelical faith, spells the end of dogma unless indeed, in the stead of the old-time dogma, we put a sort of phantom dogma.” The Reformation replaced the demand for faith, which corresponds with the law, by the freedom of the children of God, who are not under the constraint of the law of belief but rejoice in the gift bestowed on them, viz. in the promise of the forgiveness of sins in Christ.[1750]

In this, again, there is much that is true, even though we may not be willing to subscribe to all the author says. Luther undoubtedly lays undue stress on those tenets of the faith which seem to him to refer to justification and spiritual freedom, and he does so to the detriment of what remains. “Hence the Gospel,” Luther says for instance, “is nothing else but the preaching of Christ, the Son of God and the Son of David, true God and Man, Who by His death and again-rising from the dead has overcome sin, death and hell for all those who believe in Him.” The Evangelists, so he says, describe the conquest of “Sin, death and hell” at great length, the others “more briefly like St. Peter and St. Paul”; at any rate the “Gospel must not be made into a code of laws or a handbook.”[1751] This was indeed to raise the standard of revolt against doctrine. Well might Adolf Hausrath, in a passage already quoted, speak of Luther as “the greatest revolutionary of the 16th century.”

The question touched upon above deserves, however, to be looked into still more closely in the light of what other more moderate Protestant theologians say.

Gustav Kawerau, speaking from such a standpoint, points out that Luther “runs the risk of confusing the Evangelical view of faith with that which sees in faith the acceptance of a string of doctrinal propositions, i.e. with that faith which is made up of so and so many articles, all of such importance that to reject one involves the dropping of the others.”[1752]

This is so true that the historian and theologian in question rather understates the case by saying that Luther merely “runs the risk.” It is no difficult task in this connection to instance definite statements to this effect made by him, or even to enumerate the actual “articles” of faith he regarded as essential. In No. 12 of the articles of Schwabach (Torgau) he says, as Kawerau himself points out: “Such a Church is nothing else than the faithful who hold, believe and teach the above articles and propositions.... For where the Gospel is preached and the Sacraments are rightly used, there we have the holy Christian Church.”[1753]

Amongst such articles Luther, following the example of the oldest Creeds, includes even the Virginity of Mary.[1754]

It was to this that the theologian, Otto Scheel, recently alluded when compelled to make a stand against those theologians who, particularly during the years 1519-1523, miss in Luther any adherence to the articles of the faith. Scheel appeals to what Luther says of Mary’s Virginity in his German version of his “De votis monasticis” (1521 and 1522). In one passage Luther, referring to the thesis that every single article of faith must be believed, otherwise, no matter how earnest and virtuous be one’s life, everlasting damnation is certain, brings forward as an instance our Lady’s virginity: The religious, in their “bawdy-houses of Satan” [the monasteries], by their blasphemous vows deny the whole Gospel truth, consequently far more than merely that article concerning Mary. Hence they cannot be saved even did they possess “Mary’s virginity and holiness.” “Here we have,” rightly concludes Scheel, “even as early as 1521-22 a view of faith which does not differ materially from that which we meet with in Luther after the controversies on the Sacrament.” This, however, means, according to him, “that we must regard Luther’s development in a light different from that now usual.”[1755]

Which then does Scheel hold to be the correct view? He finds in Luther at all times contradictions which admit of no escape: “The contradictions which clearly exist at a later date in Luther’s life’s work were, in point of fact, always latent within him.... This is equivalent to saying that we must regard Luther’s work as a whole, and that, too, just in its most vital parts, as one marred by contradictions which it is impossible to explain away.”[1756]

Since Luther’s demand that all the articles of faith should be accepted without distinction was one which he had taken over from Catholicism, we should, continues Scheel, “seek in the Middle Ages the clue to his attitude instead of assigning to him the solution of modern problems as some are disposed to do.” In this, however, Scheel is proposing nothing new, but rather something that stands to reason; the method he suggests has, moreover, always been followed by Catholic critics of Luther’s theology.

Catholics found without difficulty plentiful statements of Luther’s in support of the inviolability of the whole chain of olden dogma, so great had been the influence exerted over him by the convictions of his youth. It was an easy matter for controversialists to turn such statements of his against Luther himself, the more so, since, eminently justified though they were within Catholicism, they were utterly out of place on his mouth and furnish a striking condemnation of his own rash undertaking—a fact to which he, however, refused to open his eyes. For instance, in the very evening of his days when he himself could look back on his destruction of so many of the dogmas of the olden Church, speaking to the Sacramentarians, Luther says of the traditional doctrines: “This is what I thought, yea and said too, viz. that the devil is never idle; no sooner has he started one heresy than he must needs start others so that no error ever remains alone. When the ring has once been broken it is no longer a ring; it has lost its strength and is ever snapping anew.... Whoever does not or will not believe aright one article assuredly does not believe any article with a true and earnest faith.... Hence we may say straight out: Believe all, or nothing! The Holy Ghost will not allow Himself to be divided or sundered, so as to teach or make us believe one article aright and another awry.” “Otherwise,” so he concludes, all unconsciously justifying his Catholic critics, “no heretic would ever be condemned nor would there be a heretic on all the earth; for it is the nature of heretics to tamper first with one article only and then bit by bit to deny them all.... If the bell have but a single crack, it no longer rings true and is quite useless.”[1757]

It was on the strength of this principle of the absolutely binding character of all the truths of religion (at least of those which he himself retained) that he ventured to depict Zwingli as the biggest rebel against the faith.

“Zwingel, who was miserably slain on the battlefield, and Œcolampadius who died of grief on that account, perished in their sins because they obstinately persisted in their errors.”[1758] He could not “but despair of Zwingel’s salvation,” for the latter was an arch-heretic.

So harsh a judgment on Zwingli is, however, quite unjustifiable if we start from the more liberal conception of faith which Luther had once advocated together with the stricter view, and which indeed he never in so many words retracted. On such grounds Kawerau may well take Zwingli under his wing against Luther. His words will be quoted a little further on. Meanwhile, however, it must be pointed out that Luther’s unkindly criticism of Zwingli is not to be explained merely by the above view of faith. In his Life of Luther Adolf Hausrath throws some light on its psychological side. “Language so insulting as Luther’s,” he says, “no bishop had ever used against Zwingli,”[1759] and he lays his hand boldly on the weak spot with the object of bringing out Luther’s astounding want of logic. He had proclaimed the right of examining Scripture freely and without being tied down by the teaching of the Church, yet he refused to allow Zwingli such freedom; the latter “had applied the principle indiscriminately to everything (?) handed down by the Church, whereas Luther wished to put aside merely what was contrary to his convictions on justification by faith alone, or to the plain sense of Scripture.”[1760] Luther “fancied he could guess who had inspired the Sacramentarians with their blasphemies. Thereby he envenomed the controversy from the very outset. For him there could be no truce with the devil.”[1761] “In any sign of life given by the Swiss he at once sniffed the ‘devil’s breeches.’”[1762] Luther himself admits that “to begin with, it was Zwingli’s wrong doctrine and the fact ‘that the Swiss wished to be first,’”[1763] which had led to the estrangement. The “wrong doctrine” he detected, thanks to that gift of infallibility which led the Sacramentarians to call his behaviour “papistic.” We have here, according to Hausrath, a “religious genius, who, by the force of his personality and word, sought to make all others bow to the law of his mind.” “We must resign ourselves to the fact that this great man had the shortcomings which belong to his virtues. Disputatiousness and love to pick a quarrel, faults which simply represented the other side of his firm faith, and which some had already deplored in the young monk at Erfurt, Wittenberg and Leipzig, had naturally not been abated by his many victorious combats, and, now, more than ever, Oldecop’s words were true: ‘He wanted to be in the right in all the disputations and was fond of quarrelling.’ The fact is that Luther was no exception to the rule, that man finds nothing harder to bear well than success.”[1764]

Nevertheless, to return to the question of faith, Luther had already laid down in his writings certain marks by which it might be ascertained whether a man is a believer or not, and which at any rate scarcely tally with the criteria he applies to Zwingli. Judged by these Zwingli would emerge quite blameless.

Kawerau points this out in defence of Zwingli: “The idea of faith,” he says, “which Luther had newly evolved, in opposition to the Catholic assent to the teaching of the Bible and the Church, led logically to determining from a man’s attitude towards Christ and His saving Grace whether he was a true believer or not; Luther himself frequently made this his criterion; for instance, in answer to the question: Who is a member of the Church, and whom must I regard as my dear brother in Christ? He replies, all those ‘Who confess Christ as sent by God the Father in order to reconcile us to Him by His death and to obtain for us grace’; or again: All ‘those who put their trust in Christ alone and confess Him in faith,’ or yet again: ‘All those who seek the Lord with their whole heart and soul ... and who trust in nothing but in God’s mercy.’”[1765] But had not Zwingli loudly proclaimed himself to be one of these?

“In such utterances of Luther’s we find,” according to Kawerau, “summed up the purely religious and Evangelical conception of faith.” Here there is no question of any accepting of the several articles of faith, of any submission to a “string of doctrinal propositions,” of any “faith made up of so and so many ‘articles’ all of such importance that to reject one involves the dropping of the others.”[1766] According to this theologian Luther was untrue to his own basic theories when he assailed Zwingli as he did. Kawerau also agrees with Hausrath in holding that the principal cause of Luther’s estrangement was a psychological one which indeed constituted the weakest spot in his whole position, viz. his identification of his own theological outbuilding of an article of faith, with its religious content,[1767] or, to speak more plainly, his setting himself up as the sole authority after having set aside that of the Church.

(b) The Melting away of Luther’s Dogmas viewed in the Light of Protestant Criticism

We have already put on record those doctrines of the olden Church, which, inclusive of the idea of faith itself, Luther threw overboard; we now come to the doctrines which he retained, which deserve to be considered in connection with the strictures of modern Protestant theologians, particularly of Harnack. At least these strictures bring out very clearly their contradictory and illogical character. Evidently Harnack is not altogether wrong when he uses as a page-heading the words “Exit dogma in Protestantism,”[1768] and elsewhere:[1769] “Embarrassments and problems in Luther’s heritage.”

Luther, to quote Harnack, “frequently hardened his heart against certain consequences of his own religious principles.”[1770] But “if ‘the whole Luther’ is to be set up as the law of faith for the Evangelical Church, then, where it is a question of matters of history, such consequences cannot be simply ignored.” “The Lutheran Reformation,” writes Fr. Loofs, “would have ended otherwise as regards the history of dogma, had Luther braved tradition and followed up his theories to their logical conclusion. The shreds of the old which remained hampered the growth of the new ideas, even in Luther’s own case.”[1771]

Original Sin and Unfreedom; Law and Gospel; Penance

Luther took over from the olden Church the doctrine of the existence of original sin, but he so changed it, particularly by affirming that it resulted in the destruction of free-will, that the doctrine itself becomes untenable.

Of this all-important groundwork of his anthropology the theologian Taube says: “It is not surprising that Luther fails to remain faithful to the attitude he has assumed. It is as impossible to him, as to any other thinking mind, to fail to find freedom presupposed in every corner, in his personal Christianity, and in his own work as pastor, preacher or reformer. Facts are stronger than theories and a priori reasonings.... Either the data of experience must be held to be mere illusion, or absolute determinism must be thrown over. We cannot answer the same question both in the negative and in the affirmative and then declare it to be a mystery; it would be no mystery but simply a contradiction.”[1772]

Still, Luther found it easier than Taube thinks to proclaim things to be mysteries which palpably were nothing but contradictions. A glance at Köstlin’s “Luthers Theologie” shows how often Luther attempts to distract the reader from the difficulties he himself enumerates with the consoling words: This we must not seek to pry into.—Taube too is optimistic with regard to the fate of the doctrine of unfreedom in modern Protestant theology; appealing to the above contradictions, he writes: “It is not surprising that the Lutheran theology, closely as it keeps to Luther’s views in many other matters, has never ventured to follow him on this all-important point, and, in fact, has departed ever further from him.”[1773] The truth is that the period of withdrawal inaugurated by Melanchthon in 1527 has been succeeded in our own day by one of closer approximation. (Cp. above, vol. ii., p. 292, n. 4.)

Apart from the theory of man’s absolute depravity and lack of free-will there are other things which are damaging to Luther’s doctrine of original sin, particularly his opinion that original sin persists after baptism.

“The doctrine of original sin as taught by the olden Church,” says Harnack, “was amended by Luther and made to agree with his own principles,” but it was against his principles “to make of such things articles of faith. His own sense of sin and the need he felt of pacifying his conscience occupied in it so large a place that he transformed what was in reality a piece of Christian self-judgment into an historical fact of universal appliance concerning the beginnings of the human race.” At any rate Luther’s exaggeration of the impotence of fallen man served “as a ground of excuse for our own guilt.”[1774]

As regards his doctrine of the Law and the Gospel; Luther hoped, by contrasting it with the Gospel, to bring the Law into prominence. By the Law he understood the sum-total of what was commanded not merely in the Old but also in the New Testament; the teaching of the Gospel, on the other hand, contained only consoling thoughts on the fulfilment of the Law by Christ and the appropriation of Christ’s merits by faith.[1775]

“Plain as it is,” says Harnack, “what Luther really desired by his distinction between the Law and the Gospel, still, coming to details, we find that the Reformer’s statements do not always agree. Thus it is partly left to our own private judgment to select those utterances which we consider more important; Luther himself nevertheless gives the preference to certain ideas which in perpetuum invest the Law with a peculiar independent significance. Is it not, however, our duty to depict the Reformer in accordance with his most original ideas?”[1776]

Such an “original” idea is that of the abrogation of the Law for the Christian who is really redeemed and who voluntarily and without compulsion leaves faith to express itself in action. “Certainty of the abrogation of the Law constitutes a certain demand which can be met only in one way.” Luther carries the paradox so far as to say: The Law is given to be broken. And yet ... Luther ever cherishes the “assumption that the Law is the expression of God’s immutable will, and, in this sense, has its own enduring sphere of action side by side with the Gospel, as though the Will of God were not implicitly contained in the latter. But this admission involved a place being found for the Law even in Christianity.” Of this difficulty Luther was perfectly conscious, but he was deft enough in circumventing it. “The Law qua lex is undoubtedly abrogated for the Christian; whoever tries to act up to the Law must needs go to hell; but in God’s sight it still holds good, i.e. God’s Will remains expressed therein and He must watch over its fulfilment.” If the law is not fulfilled God must demand penance.[1777]

In the question of penance we again see Luther assume an attitude which is, as a matter of fact, subversive of his own doctrine. His ideas on this point are so contradictory that Protestant writers on dogma have not been able to agree in their accounts, and needless to say, still less in their judgments.

Alfred Galley, one of the most recent writers on “Luther’s doctrine of penance,” admits: “The various attempts made to solve the matter have so far yielded no satisfactory result.”[1778] And yet for ten years Lipsius, Herrmann and others had been carefully exploring this central point of Luther’s practical theology. Galley’s own efforts, kindly disposed as he is to Luther, and in spite of his mastery of the texts, have not as yet rallied other theologians to his opinion.

Luther’s original doctrine of Penance, to which frequent allusion has already been made, started, according to Loofs, (1906) with the assumption that contrition is produced solely by the “love of righteousness,” and that true penance “does not come from the Law,” because the latter does nothing but “kill, curse, render guilty and pronounce judgment”; penance produced by the Law led only to hypocrisy. “Thus, before one has faith, to think of sin and of the Law is harmful.” Luther, however, gradually acquiesced in the modifications introduced by Melanchthon in favour of the Law and of that sorrow which arises from the thought of the penalties. That “Luther to a certain extent adopted Melanchthon’s ideas on penance is still more apparent in the Antinomian controversy [1537-1540],” yet the ideas of his opponent, Agricola, bore some “resemblance” to “Luther’s earlier ideas” on Christian penance.[1779]

As for Harnack, he emphasises the confusion which arose in the Lutheran theology owing to Luther’s illogical attitude towards so eminently practical a question as the doctrine of penance; even during Luther’s lifetime the doctrine of penance had been a real “labyrinth.” “Here too,” says Harnack, “Luther himself took the lead, and then quietly winked at what was contrary to his own early principles, which, moreover, he had never retracted. That the mediaeval Catholic view had its after effect on him ought not to be denied.” “He was convinced that faith works penance, the ‘dying daily,’ which indeed is but the negative side of faith,” and that “only such penance as comes from faith [from the Gospel] is of value in God’s sight.... This is certainly a view which may easily grow into its dreadful opposite, viz. the comfortable presuming on salvation.... If people are told that they must always be performing penance, and that particular acts of penance are of no avail, few will ever have recourse to penance at all.”[1780]

Hence, according to Harnack, Luther made a change in the doctrine of penance and more importance was given to the Law; “for each separate act of sin on the part of the baptised” satisfaction must be made, and “Christ must intervene anew with His fulfilment of the Law.”[1781] By this means, by the creative action of God, “faith” is constantly revived in the man who has fallen, and God, as Luther now assumes, works by means of the Law. In this wise, faith, however, becomes, says Harnack, “a meritorious work,” seeing that it is the seal of our reconciliation; moreover “personal responsibility and personal action must play some part.”[1782] But how is man to do this, devoid as he is of any freedom of the will?

Again, for all his alteration of his doctrine of penance Luther failed to “attain the object he was after, viz. to check laxity and frivolity. On the contrary, the new doctrine tended, in its later developments, to promote and foster them.”[1783] Nor was much gained, when, in order to promote penance and greater earnestness of life the Law was “placed before the Gospel. This Melanchthon did with Luther’s consent in the ‘Instructions for the Visitors.’[1784] Occasion was taken at the same time to insist strongly on the use of the confessional in order to check at least the worst sins.” “The intervention of the clergyman, which was undoubtedly needed by the ‘common people,’” constituted merely “a Lutheran counterpart of the Catholic sacrament of penance,” though, adds Harnack, “minus its burdensome Romish additions.”[1785]

Luther’s Doctrine of Justification and Good Works, as seen by Protestant Critics

According to Harnack, “the idea of justification,” the central point of Luther’s teaching, “shrinks into a merely outward act of God’s designed to quieten consciences. Here again the superiority of the Catholic doctrine could not fail to appear; for to be content with the ‘fides sola’ could not but involve a very questionable laxity. It would, from this point of view, have been far better to have represented the ‘fides caritate formata’ as alone of any value in God’s sight.”[1786] In his doctrine of justification by faith alone, Luther never got over the weak point, viz. his exclusion of charity, at least a commencement of which, together with faith, hope and repentance, had been required by the olden Church as a preparation for justification. Some return to the Catholic requirements was called for. “Hence it is not in the least surprising, ... that Melanchthon at a later date abandoned the ‘sola fides’ and came to advocate a modified form of synergism. The Luther-zealots were thrown into hopeless confusion by the necessity in which they found themselves, of harmonizing the older Evangelical theory with the doctrine of penance whilst avoiding the pitfall of Melanchthon’s synergism.” They found themselves, so Harnack says, face to face with two “iustificationes,” that by faith alone, and that by law and penance, not to speak of a third, the “iustificatio” of infants by the act of baptism. “These contradictions become still further accentuated when the ‘regeneratio’ was taken into account,” etc.[1787] It is not worth while to pursue any further Harnack’s criticism which at times tends to become carping.

As regards the doctrine of good works, Protestant theology of late has been disposed to take offence at Luther’s undue extension of freedom, which seems to endanger good works and the zealous keeping of the Law.

It is the Christian’s art, so Loofs sums up Luther’s teaching, to allow no thought of the Law to trouble his conscience, but simply to regard Christ as the bearer of his sins. “Here the one-sided view of the ‘Law,’ seen only from the standpoint of the need of acquiring merit by works, has a disturbing effect”; such is Loofs’s opinion. According to Luther such contempt for the Law is often impossible, hence he determined to conquer the “dualism of the old-new man” of which we like St. Paul (Gal. ii. 20) are conscious: I live, and yet I do not; I am dead, and yet I am not; a sinner, and yet no sinner; I have the Law and yet I have it not. We ought, according to Luther, to say to ourselves: There is a time to die and a time to live, a Law to be obeyed and a Law to be despised. “Even during the Antinomian controversy,” concludes Loofs, “Luther did not abandon such thoughts.”[1788]

Luther’s want of discrimination is most apparent, he says, in the fact, that, owing to his “peculiar interest in the preaching of the grace of God,” he depreciated works and the Law as the very fount of self-righteousness.[1789]

Loofs rightly refers to a sermon in the Church-postils where Luther inveighs against the “Papists, Anabaptists and other sects” who scream against us: “What is the use of your preaching so much of faith and Christ? What good does it do the people?”[1790] Luther could not in fact “sufficiently decry the Law or urge too strongly that it was useless to Christians.”[1791]

In the passage quoted Luther says of the exhortations to works and the preaching of the Commandments: “This preaching does nothing else but kill, i.e. far from being good or useful it is only harmful ... rank poison and death.”

And he goes on: “All our works, however precious they may be, are nothing but poison and death.... People may indeed boast loudly and say: ‘If you live in this way, take pains to keep the Law and perform many good works, you will be saved.’ But that these are only vain words, nay, a harmful doctrine, will soon be apparent.”[1792] It is not in man’s power to keep the Commandments by the performance of the right and necessary works, hence he becomes troubled and at last despairs if he strives after works. “The human race is so depraved that no one can be found who does not transgress all God’s commandments even though the wrath of God and his eternal damnation be held up before him and preached to him daily; indeed if this is impressed upon a man over much he only begins to rage against it more horribly.”[1793] It is merely “reason with its human ideas” which “cannot get beyond this, viz. that God is gracious to all who live in this manner and do what the Ten Commandments require; for reason knows nothing of the misery of our depraved nature, nor does it know that no one is able to keep God’s command.” For this cause Luther had at last brought to light and taught “that other doctrine in which grace and reconciliation are proclaimed” to us according to the “spirit and letter of St. Paul, whereas even the old doctors, Origen, Jerome and others, had not grasped St. Paul’s meaning.”[1794]

In Popery “Scripture and St. Paul’s Epistles” were pushed under the bench, and, instead, we wallowed in human foolishness like the swine in their sties.[1795]

“Of what use is it to us that Moses and the Law say: This shalt thou do, this would God have of thee? Yes, good Moses, I know this well and it is indeed quite true. But do you tell me how it is that, unfortunately, I neither keep it nor am able to keep it? It is no easy thing to spend money with an empty purse or to drink out of an empty can; if I am to pay my debts and to quench my thirst, then please tell me how I may come by a full purse and a brimming can. To this the babblers have no answer,” etc.[1796]

And yet the Catholic writers whom he dubs babblers, Erasmus and Eck for instance, had demonstrated from Scripture and tradition that first, man is by no means so helpless and depraved as Luther assumes, and, secondly, that the grace of God is at his disposal every moment in order, by supernatural assistance, to enable his natural powers to keep the Law. While pointing this out they appeal at the same time to those passages of Scripture which spur us on to good works, and even make our heavenly reward dependent on them.

Of these latter passages Loofs also asks: “In reality are not those alone saved who, besides their faith, can point to good works or at least to their fulfilment of the first Commandment? Does not Scripture over and over again speak of our being judged according to our works, and of the eternal reward?” Luther, however, so he remarks, got over the difficulty “by assuming, that, in such passages, faith is meant even when they speak of good works”; Luther actually finds a parallel in the “rule of the ‘communicatio idiomatum’” which deals with the Divine attributes of Christ made man.[1797]

Another attempt to evade the difficulty, so Loofs declares, is found in Luther’s statement regarding the reward promised in the Bible to the just for their works. He argued that there must be some difference between the saved in their “degree of brightness and glory,” and thus, “accidentaliter,” he makes some account of the reward.[1798] Loofs, however, also draws attention to the fact that in the same sermons on Matthew, when touching cursorily on this, Luther “pokes fun at the idea of God setting some ‘particular Saint’ in a topmost place in heaven, and inveighs against the traditional idea of the ‘præmium accidentale.’”[1799] This is quite true, for Luther’s statements do not agree even here. In the passage quoted he is explaining his doctrine according to which, in this world, all the justified are equal in sanctity, the sinner who has just been converted being as pleasing to God as the Apostles. “For were St. Peter a better Christian than I am, he would have to have a better Christ, a better Gospel and a better baptism. But, seeing that the heritage we enjoy is one and the same, we must all be equal in this.”[1800]

There are few sayings of Luther’s where the wholly mechanical nature of the forgiveness and sanctification taught by him, stands out more clearly.

That, in spite of all this, he does not exclude works, is sufficiently remarkable. In the very passage where Luther brings forward the objection of the Papists and Anabaptists: It must be done, i.e. good works, must be performed, he hastens to reply: “We have the Ten Commandments which we teach and keep as well as they”;[1801] the only difference was, that, he by his Evangelical preaching taught how the Commandments were really to be honoured.

Loofs can even say that Luther proclaims the need of good works. He quotes the following utterances, for instance, from Luther’s later years: “Opera habent suam necessitatem”; “they, too, must be there”; “On account of the hypocrites we must say that good works are requisite for salvation (‘necessaria ad salutem’),”[1802] “he did not shrink from speaking in this way when giving counsel.”[1803] It is quite true, that, when preaching to the people, mindful of their faults and vices, he is fond, as Loofs shows, of recalling how Christ says “drily and clearly”: “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments [Mt. xix. 17]; item, Do this and thou shalt live, etc. [Luke x. 28]. This must be taken as it stands and without debate.”[1804] Hence Luther even calls those folk “mad” who say: “‘Only believe and you will be saved.’ No, good fellow, that will not do, and you will never get to the kingdom of heaven unless you keep the Commandments.... For it is written plainly enough: ‘If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.’”[1805] And Luther supports this text by others which speak of works, of their merit and demerit, their reward and punishment.[1806]

And yet immediately after he goes on to complain: “How are we to do what the Law perpetually urges and requires, seeing that we are unable to comply with its demands?”[1807]

Finally he reaches his usual answer: “I will do it, says Christ, and fulfil it”; first of all He again and again obtains forgiveness for us, “seeing that we are unable to keep the Law”; Christ, however, did not wish us “to continue sinning”; on the contrary, the grace He infuses makes us keep the Law “willingly and gladly”; good works, more particularly those of charity towards our neighbour, spring up of themselves after “we have crept beneath Christ’s mantle and wing.”[1808] Where faith is present “it cannot but work unceasingly what is good. It does not ask whether there be a call to do good works, but even before the question is put it has already done them, and is ever after doing them.”[1809] Those Christians—presumably the majority—who fail to find themselves in such a state receive but poor consolation: “Whoever does not perform such works is an unbelieving man, who gropes and looks about for faith and good works but knows neither the one nor the other.”[1810]

Luther did not see that he was endangering both faith and works and undermining their very foundations.

For, as his opponents objected, the last category of Christians, however careless they might be in the matter of good works, and however much they might fail to keep the Commandments, could, nevertheless, for the most part, at least boast of having the faith, whether regarded in the light of a “loving confidence in God’s grace” or in the more usual and ordinary sense of an acceptance of the divine revelation as true. Their faith, it was urged, was according to Luther at the outset very closely in touch with sin, indeed they had been justified by faith without either repentance or change of heart, faith having merely spread a cloak over their evil deeds; and yet now here was Luther telling them that they had lost the faith unless they lived by it, or if they transgressed the Commandments even by a venial sin—for Luther sees no distinction between mortal sin and venial.

Loofs is certainly not overstating things when he says that, “Luther was not clear in his own mind”[1811] as to his doctrine on the great questions of works and the Law, and that his “opinion comprised much that did not tally.”[1812]

Loofs adds: “How far Luther himself was aware that much of what he said voiced merely his own personal opinion it would be hard to tell.... Without his wealth of ideas and his ability to insist now on one, now on another side of a subject Luther would not have been so successful as a reformer. But he was hampered by his own qualities so soon as it became a question of putting his new views in didactic form.”[1813]

Loofs, like Harnack, spares no praise when speaking of Luther’s “qualities” and the “happy intuition” which enabled him to overthrow the olden order and to call into being a new, “religious,” Christianity.

Luther’s Doctrine of Merit in the Eyes of Protestant Critics

One such “happy intuition” Loofs sees in the fact, that, in the question of works and merit Luther “clearly perceived and got the better of the opinion, untenable in religion, that a scale of merit exists as between God and man.”[1814] The critic abstains from discussing the Catholic teaching on supernatural merit. Its earlier no less than its later defenders rightly emphasised, in opposition to Luther, that the olden doctrine of merit rested on the express promise of God to reward faithful service, and not, as Luther insinuated, on any absolute right of the works in themselves to such reward. The act which was to meet with such a reward must, they said, be not only good in itself but also supernaturally good, i.e. it must be performed by man’s powers aided by supernatural grace; even this, however, would not suffice were there not the gracious promise on God’s part, guaranteed by revelation, that such an act would be requited by a heavenly reward. Yet this was not to deny a certain “condignitas in actu primo” inherent in the act itself.

Luther, it is true, laughs to scorn the Popish doctrine of merit which makes God Himself our debtor. Yet long before St. Augustine had answered the objection: “God has become our debtor, not as though He has received something from us, but because He has promised what pleased Him. It is a different thing when we say to a man: You are my debtor because I have given you something, and when we say to God: Give us what Thou hast promised, for we have done what Thou didst command.”[1815]

In the fragments of the ancient doctrine of religious morality which Luther saw fit to retain he put germs of disintegration owing to his failure to recognise the above truth. Because he would hear nothing of merit and everywhere scented righteousness-by-works, he built up a theory of good works which lacks a foundation. In the last resort everything is coloured by his dread of self-righteousness and of any human co-operation. “The ‘Law,’ to Luther, seemed conditioned by that ‘condicio meriti,’” says Loofs, “which belonged to the Law of Moses, and, which, owing to the craving of the natural man for self-righteousness, also becomes part of the natural law.”[1816]

So strongly does Luther denounce merit and self-righteousness that he practically does away with his own doctrine of works.

First, his denial of free-will and the absolute determinism of his doctrine makes an end of all spontaneous, meritorious action on man’s part. Further, he is untrue to his position, repudiating it in his sermons and popular writings as far as possible, and replacing it by one morally more defensible. In later years we find him casting over his own teaching even in his theological disputations; in his anxiety to counter the Antinomians, he goes so far as to declare works necessary for salvation.

Even earlier the fanatics and Anabaptists had helped to some extent in the work of demolition. Their conclusions as to the dangers of Luther’s system and their protests against its evil moral consequences are really much more vigorous and damaging than might appear from Luther’s bitter rejoinders. “The unjust attitude of the reformers towards the ‘fanatics,’” says Harnack, “was disastrous to themselves and their cause. How much might they not have learnt from these despised people even though obliged to repudiate their principles.”[1817]

The work of demolition was, moreover, being carried out under Luther’s very eye by Philip Melanchthon and his friends. Luther’s doctrine, as has already been pointed out, was not at all to the taste of the dialectician of Lutheranism. “The Philippists,” says Loofs, “were very far from holding Luther’s own views,” “as far removed as” the Antinomians. Luther himself, however, “was partly to blame for the confusion.” From the standpoint adopted by Melanchthon “it was impossible to comply” with Luther’s demand for a clear “distinction to be made between Law and Gospel”;[1818] yet, according to Luther, this was one of “the things on which theology hinges.”[1819] According to Loofs, Melanchthon’s theology was a means of spoiling some “valuable reformation truths,” nay, “the most priceless of Luther’s new ideas.”[1820] As for Melanchthon’s allegation, viz. that he had merely put Luther’s doctrine more mildly, Loofs says bluntly: “If he meant this, then he deceived himself.”[1821] As to the points under discussion, Luther not only thought differently from Melanchthon at an earlier date, but persisted in so doing till his very death. Luther, nevertheless, never expressed any disapproval of Melanchthon’s ideas, widely as they differed from his own.

Luther’s teaching on the Sacraments and on the Supper according to Protestant Teaching

In Harnack’s opinion Luther, by his teaching on the one sacrament, viz. the Word, “destroyed the olden ecclesiastical view. Yet he unconsciously retained a certain remnant ... which had fatal results on the development of his doctrine. Though here again we find truth and error side by side in Luther, we may not shut our eyes to the fact that he opened the door to errors of a grave character.”[1822]

The principal error in his doctrine of the sacraments consisted, according to Harnack, in his having made his own a reminiscence of the Catholic view. Instead of teaching that the Holy Ghost acts by the Word alone, he came, as his statements subsequent to 1525 show, to regard this Spirit as operating by the “Word and the Sacraments.”[1823]

“In his teaching on the sacraments he forsook the attitude he had once adopted as a reformer and accepted views which tended to confuse his own doctrine of faith and still more the theology of his followers. In his efforts to thwart the fanatics he came to embrace ... some highly questionable propositions.... This relapse in his views on the means of grace wrought untold damage to Lutheranism.”[1824] Here his desire to get the better of the fanatics played a part, and so did likewise the psychological starting-point of his whole teaching. He reverted to the means of grace, “because he wished to provide real consolation for troubled consciences, and to preserve them from the hell of uncertainty concerning that state of grace of which the fanatics appeared to make so small account.... It was, however, not merely by his rejection of certain definite acts as means of grace that Luther returned to the narrow views of the Middle Ages which he had previously forsaken—the spirit lives not (as Luther knew better than any other man), thanks to any means of grace, but thanks rather to that close union with its God on Whom it lays hold through Christ—he did so still more by seeking, first, to vindicate Infant Baptism as a means of grace in the strict sense; secondly, by accepting Penance as at least a preparation for grace, and, thirdly, by maintaining that the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Supper constitutes the essential part of this sacrament.”[1825] It is true he “never ceased to maintain that the means of grace were nothing but the Word whereby faith is awakened,” but, in spite of this, the “opus operatum” of the olden Church “had again made its appearance and weakened or obscured the strict relations between Gospel and faith.”[1826]

Of Infant Baptism in Luther’s system Harnack rightly says: “If Luther’s Evangelical theory holds good, viz. that grace and faith are inseparably linked,[1827] then Infant Baptism is in itself no sacrament, and can be no more than an ecclesiastical rite; if it is a sacrament in the strict sense, then evidently his theory is at fault. We cannot escape the dilemma, either by appealing to the faith of the parents or god-parents [as Luther, to begin with, did]—for this is the worst kind of the ‘fides implicita’—or by assuming that faith is given in baptism,[1828] for an unconscious faith is almost as bad as that other ‘fides implicita.’ Hence the proper thing for Luther to have done would have been either to abolish Infant Baptism ... or to admit that it was a mere rite to be completed later.... Luther, however, did neither; on the contrary, he retained Infant Baptism as the sacrament of regeneration and accepted as an efficacious act what should, given his theory, have at most been a symbol of God’s preventing grace. This was, however much he might deny it, to hark back to the ‘opus operatum’ and to dissolve the link between faith and the working of grace.”[1829]

Again, according to Harnack, the mould in which Luther cast his doctrine of the Supper once more involved him in contradictions which rendered his position untenable.

On the one hand, by so strenuously insisting on the belief in the Real Presence as a binding doctrinal formula he was untrue to his own theory that doctrine was not to be formulated; on the other hand, his restatement of the doctrine of the Supper emptied it of all content. It was “in part the fault of his formulating of the faith that the later Lutheran Church, with its Christology, its teaching on the Sacrament ... and the false standard by which it judged divergent doctrines and pronounced them heretical, threatened for a while to become a sort of caricature of the Catholic Church.”[1830]

Harnack notes how Luther, the better to reach the real meaning of the words “This is My Body,” actually called tradition to his aid, in his case an extremely illogical thing to do. His consciousness that in holding fast to the Real Presence he was backed by the whole Church of yore lends his words unusual power. “Even were a hundred thousand devils and all the fanatics to fall upon it, still the doctrine must stand firm.”[1831] We may add, that, with regard to this sacrament, Luther outdid his adversaries in his attachment to tradition and antiquity, reintroducing communion under both kinds as being alone in strict accord with Scripture.

There was also much that was personal and arbitrary in the doctrine of the Sacrament of the Altar as shaped anew and established by Luther. For one thing, he dwelt far too exclusively on this sacrament being the pledge of the forgiveness of sins. Again, in his desire to counter Zwingli, he put forward theories on the sacrament, which embody all sorts of disadvantages and contradictions not to be found in the teaching of the earlier Church. He, indeed, denied Transubstantiation, but the “Swiss could not for the life of them see why he did, since he admits that a stupendous miracle takes place in the Supper.”[1832]

For the Church’s ancient doctrine of Transubstantiation he substituted Impanation, and even this he admitted only in the actual celebration and reception.[1833] “The awkward part was,” says Harnack, “that, according to Luther, the Body and Blood of Christ were present in the Supper only for the purpose of reception, though they might be partaken of even by an unbeliever or a heathen.”[1834] The concomitance (presence of both Body and Blood under either kind) taught by the olden Church, which, indeed, was a natural corollary of the Real Presence, he set aside, urged thereto by his theory that in Communion both kinds must be received; the only result was to introduce a new and uncalled-for miracle. To this must be added what Harnack calls the “crazy speculations on the ubiquity of the Body of Christ,”[1835] which furnished Melanchthon his principal reason for giving up Luther’s doctrine of the Supper, and, like Zwingli and Bucer, denying the Real Presence. According to Luther, the ubiquity of the Body of Christ rested on the supposed “real communication of the Divine ‘idiomata’ (and consequently of the Divine omnipresence) to the humanity of Christ.”[1836]

Nor does the Real Presence, according to Luther, begin at the consecration; as to when it does, he leaves the faithful in the dark; nor does he enlighten them as to when it ceases in the remains left over after communion; in the latter regard his practice was full of contradictions.—In allowing communion to be carried to the sick in their own houses he was again unfaithful to his tenets.[1837] To any processions of the sacrament he was averse, because Christ was only present at the time of reception.

He proposed, as the better plan, that the sacrament should not be adored save by bending the knee when receiving it, and yet his own behaviour did not tally with his proposal.[1838] It was enacted at Wittenberg, in 1542, that there should be no elevation, and yet Luther had retained this rite at an earlier date, in order to defy Carlstadt, as he says, and so as not to seem in this “indifferent matter” to sanction by his attitude Carlstadt’s attack on the sacrament.[1839] He was, to say the least, verbally illogical when he termed the Eucharist the “sacrificium eucharisticum,” meaning of course thereby that it was a “thank-offering” on the part of the faithful.

It is not surprising that belief in the Real Presence, though so strongly defended by Luther, gradually evaporated in his Church largely owing to the inconsistencies just noticed. Eventually the Lutherans made their own the views of Zwingli and Melanchthon on the sacrament, though they retained an affection for certain vague and elastic terms concerning the reception of the Body and Blood of Christ.[1840] Luther spoke of the attempts to introduce Zwingli’s rationalistic doctrine of the sacrament at Frankfurt-on-the-Main as “a diabolical jugglery with the words of Christ,” “whereby simple souls are shamefully duped and robbed of their sacrament.” The thing was “handled in such a way that no one was certain what was meant or what to believe.”[1841]

Luther’s views on the Church and on Divine Worship according to Protestant Criticism

A mass of inconsequence lies in the doctrine on the Church, which he is supposed to have retained, though, as a matter of fact, he completely altered it. Thanks to his conception of the Church as a practically invisible body his view of it was so broad as to leave far behind the old, Catholic idea; nevertheless, by and by his conception of the Church grew so narrow, that, as Harnack justly remarks, “in comparison, even the Roman view of it seems in many respects more elastic and consequently superior.... The Church threatened to become a mere school, viz. the school of ‘pure [Wittenberg] doctrine.’” In this way arose “the Christianity of the theologians and pastors.... Luther on his own side repeatedly broke away from this view.”[1842] It is quite true that many contradictions are here apparent, as we shall have occasion to see later (vol. vi., xxxviii.). “His idea of the Church became obscured. The conception of the Church (communion of faith and communion of pure doctrine) became as ambiguous as the conception of the ‘doctrina evangelii.’”

Then, with regard to his teaching on public worship. Though, as remarked above (p. 147 f.), he had in principle abandoned the view held by the olden Church regarding the necessity of external worship, and had robbed it of its focus, viz. the Sacrifice of the Altar, yet he was very far from logically following this out in practice.

His standpoint, according to Harnack, was originally this: “If it is certain that man may not, and indeed cannot do anything for God’s sake, if the very idea of moving God by our works is the death of true piety, if the whole relationship between God and man depends on a believing disposition, i.e. on unshakable trust in Him, humility and constant prayer, if lastly no ceremony has any worth, then there can be no ‘Divine Service’ in the true sense of the term. The only direct service of God there is, is faith, otherwise the rule that obtains everywhere is that we serve God by charity towards our neighbour.”[1843]

Very soon, however, we find that in practice Luther reverts to some sort of common worship for the sake of the “common man,” who requires to hear the Word, to assist at public prayers, and who must also have some kind of liturgy. At times Luther seems to speak of public worship as merely a “school for the imperfect,” and, occasionally, he may really have meant it (above, p. 149 f.). By reforming the Mass and by the other directions he gave concerning public worship, scanty and faltering though they be, he introduced a practice which is at variance with his principles. “The seemingly conservative attitude he adopted in his emendation of the Missal, and his refusal to undertake a thorough reconstruction of divine worship led to many ‘Lutherans’ in the 16th, and again in the 19th century, entertaining questionable views on the specific religious value of public worship, its object and its practice. How very unlike Luther this is—seeing that Luther here can, and must, be corrected in his own light—and what a vast difference exists between the Evangelical and the Catholic doctrine of divine worship.”[1844] Harnack appeals to Gottschick’s “Luthers Anschauungen vom christlichen Gottesdienst” (1887), as clearly demonstrating this. According to Gottschick the old Lutheran liturgy is not “even relatively a genuine product of the real spirit of the Reformation.” In this theologian’s opinion, Luther “really adopted the Roman Mass, contenting himself with a few alterations.” Gottschick urges that an attempt should be made to construct “an entirely new edifice on the basis of the principles embodied in Luther’s reforming views,” etc.[1845]

Gottschick is also right when he points out, that Luther “took but little interest in liturgy.”[1846] He was, however, set on bringing the people into the new faith and Church with the utmost circumspection and with as little fuss as possible. It is not necessary to recall here how successful was his policy of retaining the external forms, particularly on the unschooled masses who were unable to see below the surface. (Cp. vol. ii., p. 319 ff.)

Luther declared that he himself, “with a few friends, really constituted the ancient Church”—“a remarkable point of view,” says Harnack, “explicable only by the idealism of his faith.”[1847]

This enabled him, so Harnack continues, “to abandon and assail the Catholic Church, and nevertheless all the while to protest that he stood with the olden Church. Though in assuming this attitude his faith was so strong that it mattered nothing to him how great or how small was the number of those who refused to bend the knee to Baal, yet it was of the greatest interest to him to show that he was a true member of that Church which had existed through the ages. Hence, he was compelled to prove the historical continuity of his position. But how could this be proved more surely than by means of the old creeds of the ancient Church still in force?”[1848]

Here, again, we are confronted by the contradiction which runs through the whole of Luther’s theology.

Even the very Creeds he had undermined by that subjectivism which he had exalted into a principle. Every Creed must submit to being tested by the Word of God, either by Luther himself or by any other man who considered himself equal to the task. Furthermore, the Word of God is subservient to the Canon set up by Luther or any other Christian scholar, and its sense may be determined by any Christian sufficiently enlightened to understand it. This was to open up the road to a Christianity minus any creed or dogma.

Luther’s claims, whether to represent the olden Church or to have furnished a better and firmer basis for the future, have never been more vigorously questioned by any Protestant theologian of modern days than by Adolf Harnack.

If we sum up in Harnack’s words the results of modern Protestant criticism exercised on Luther’s teaching, we find that they do not in the least countenance the obsolete view of some of Luther’s latest admirers, viz. that he preserved what was good and “wholesome” of the existing dogmas and merely added “one, or two supplementary doctrines.”[1849] Even to-day we still hear it said that his belief and the “ancient dogma” were really “in complete harmony”; people, in support of this statement, appeal to what might naturally be considered the best witness, viz. to Luther himself, who was quite of this opinion. But when the defenders of this view begin to speak of Luther’s “alteration” of dogma and of his having “reconstructed” it, then, says Harnack, it becomes “hard to tell what the words are intended to convey,” in any case, it is an admission that “Luther’s conception of faith in some way or other modified the whole of dogma.”[1850]

It would be more correct, according to Harnack, to say, that “Luther overthrew the whole doctrine of the olden and mediæval Church, retaining only a few fragments.”[1851] His own “attitude of mind towards ancient dogma” was not “altogether consistent.” His “Christianity” is, as a matter of fact, “no longer inwardly bound up” with ancient dogma; his “conception of faith, i.e. what admittedly constituted his main contribution,” stands in no need of the olden doctrinal baggage.[1852] “In Luther’s Reformation the old, dogmatic Christianity was set aside and replaced by a new, Evangelical conception. The Reformation is really [for Harnack’s Protestantism] the end of the history of dogma.... If Luther agrees with this or that definition of the ancient or mediæval Church, the agreement, seen from this standpoint, is partly only apparent, partly a coincidence which can never be the result of any a priori submission to tradition.”[1853]

“So far as Luther left a ‘Theology’ to his followers it appears as an extremely complicated affair.... He did not therein give its final expression to Evangelical Christianity, but merely inaugurated it.”[1854] A philosopher may, at a pinch, find the dogmas of the Greek Church wise and profound, but no philosopher could possibly find any savour in Luther’s faith. Luther himself was not aware of the chasm that separated him from the ancient dogma, partly because he interpreted it in his own sense, partly because he retained some vestige of respect for the definitions of the Councils, partly, too, because he was only too pleased to be able to confront the Turks, heathen, Jews and fanatics with something definite, assured, exalted and incomprehensible.[1855]

We may well make Harnack’s concluding words our own: “It has been shown that the scraps of the olden belief which he retained do not tally with his views as a whole.... The whole does not merely rise above this or that dogma, but above all dogmatic Christianity in general,”[1856] i.e. the doctrines of the Christian faith are no longer binding.

2. Luther as a Popular Religious Writer. The Catechism

During the last years of his life Luther was able to put the last touch to his literary labours by undertaking a new revision of some of his more important earlier works, and by assisting in the compilation of complete editions of his writings.

Thanks partly to his own literary labours, partly to the help and support of friends and pupils, he succeeded in gathering together those works which he desired to see handed down to posterity.

In 1541 and 1545 Luther’s German translation of the Bible also received its finishing touch, and a new, amended edition was brought out, which, though slightly altered, still serves the Protestant congregations to-day. Moreover, the sermons of the Postils were revised afresh in order to furnish reading matter for the people and to help the preachers. In 1540 he himself published the first part of the Church-Postils (the winter term) and, in 1543, appeared the second portion, previously revised by Cruciger.[1857] The Home-Postils appeared for the first time in 1544, edited by Veit Dietrich. At the same time a beginning was made with the complete editions of his literary works, the first volume of the German edition appearing in 1539 and the first volume of the Latin edition in 1545.

His Collected Works; his New Edition of the Church-Postils

Luther’s German writings were collected by Cruciger and Rörer and printed at Wittenberg. The second volume was published only in 1548, after Luther’s death. The compilation of the Latin writings was carried out with the aid of various friends, for instance, of Spalatin and Rörer, and also first saw the light at Wittenberg. Both these editions were eagerly sought after by the booksellers and a great sale was anticipated.

In the introductions which Luther prefixed to both collections he not only followed the then universal fashion of seeking to make a favourable impression on the reader by an extravagant display of humility, but also gave free play to his love for grotesque exaggerations. He had no intention of writing any “Retractations,” as St. Augustine had done, however much such might be called for. Instead of this he professes to repudiate his books wholesale—though only, of course, to bring them forward again all the more vigorously. Whoever is familiar with Luther’s ways will not need to be told how to interpret and appreciate what he here says. There is no doubt, however, that countless readers of these introductions fell into the trap and exclaimed: How great and yet how humble is the man who speaks in these pages!

Luther begins the prefaces to his German works[1858] with the wish, which we have heard him express before: “Gladly would I see all my books unwritten or destroyed.”[1859] Why? “That Holy Scripture might be read and studied the more,” that Word of God, “which so long lay forgotten under the bench.” Because, in the Church, “many books and large libraries” had been collected “apart from and in addition to Scripture,” and “without any discrimination,” the “true understanding of the Divine Word had at last been lost.” At any rate it was “good and profitable that the writings of some of the Fathers and Councils had remained as witnesses and histories.” I myself, he says, “may venture to boast without pride or lying that I do not fall far short of some of the Fathers in the matter of the making of books; my life, however, I would not dare to liken to theirs.” It is, however, his books that “provide the ‘pure knowledge’ of the Word.” Nevertheless, he seeks comfort in the thought, “that, in time, my books, too, will lie dusty and forgotten,” “particularly now that it has begun to rain and hail books.” But whoever reads them, “let him see well to it that they do not prove a hindrance to his studying Scripture itself.”

He then goes on to give some quite excellent directions as to how best to study Holy Scripture. He himself had pursued this method, and were the reader too to make it his own he would be able, “if necessary, to compose as good books as the Fathers and the Councils.”

In the first place you must “altogether renounce your own judgment and reason,” and rather beg God “humbly and earnestly to ... enlighten you”; but if anyone “falls on it with his reason” ... then the result is only a new crop of fanatics. Secondly, he recommends that the text of the Bible, i.e. “the literal words of the book, should be ever studied, read and re-read with diligent attention and reflection as to what the Holy Ghost means thereby.” Thirdly, temptations: “As soon as the Word of God is being made known to you, the devil will attack you, make a real doctor of you, and, by his temptations, teach you to seek and love God’s Word.” He, too, had to thank his Papists and the raging of the devil at their bidding for having made him “a pretty fair theologian.” Hence “oratio, meditatio, tentatio.”

But if anyone seeks to win praise by writing books, then let him pull his own ears and he will find “a fine long pair of big rough donkey’s ears”; these he may adorn with golden bells so that everyone may point at him and say: “There goes the elegant animal who writes such precious books.” No, so he concludes his preface, “in this book all the praise is God’s.”

In the preface to the first volume of his Latin works Luther seeks, not so much to enhance his knowledge of Scripture as he does in the German preface, but rather to explain in his own way how he was led to take up the position he did.

He represents the indulgence controversy as the sole cause of his breach with Catholicism and does so in language in which readers, unacquainted with the real state of the case, would detect simply a defence of his struggle against the “fury and wrath of Satan.” Of the real motive of the struggle, viz. his rupture with the doctrines of the Church even previous to the Leipzig Disputation, or, indeed, to the Theses against Tetzel, he says never a word. On the other hand, he launches out into a dissertation on his Popish views at that time, which he urges had been deeper and more ingrained than those of Eck and all his opponents, and, which, unfortunately, had disfigured his earliest writings. He had been terribly afraid of the Last Judgment but at the same time had longed ardently to be eternally saved. God knew that it was only by the merest chance that he had been drawn into public controversy (“casu, non voluntate nec studio”). Only when beginning his second exposition of the Psalms (1518-19) had the knowledge dawned upon him of that “Justice of God,” whereby we are justified; before this he had hated the term “Justice of God.”[1860] He is at great pains to impress on the reader that he had “gradually advanced, thanks to much writing and teaching,” and was not one of those, “who [like the fanatics], from nothing, become all at once the greatest of men ... without labour, or temptations, or experience.” No great stress need be laid on the statement he again makes at the commencement of this preface, viz. that he would fain see all his books “buried in oblivion,” and that only the urgent entreaties of friends had won his consent to their bringing out a complete edition of his “muddled books.”

In the evening of his life Luther could look back with a certain satisfaction on the numerous popular works he had composed for the instruction and edification of the masses and the “simple,” and on the success with which they had been crowned. Again and again his fondness for thus instructing the populace had drawn him into this sphere of work; he had always striven with great perseverance and patience to better, both as to their language and their matter, the little tracts he composed. How highly he valued such works of instruction we can see from the writings which appeared from time to time as precursors of his Catechisms. They show how diligent he was in dealing with popular religious subjects.