Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Meanwhile he proceeds, ostensibly following St. Paul, to denounce the principle “he who does what he can,” etc., like wise freewill and the possibility of fulfilling the law.

  Paul teaches, for instance, in Romans viii. 3 f.: What the Mosaic law could not do on account of the rebellion of the flesh in man, namely, conquer sin, that God did by the incarnation of His Son, who overcame sin and helps us to fulfil the law; in those who are not born again, sin lives as the “law of sin,” because they are “weak” ἠσθένει against the attacks of concupiscence; on the other hand, the saving grace of the gospel frees us from the “law of sin and death.” To the proposition with which Paul introduces this doctrine, viz. that it had not been possible for the law (i.e. the Mosaic Law) to conquer sin, Luther simply adds: “where now is the freedom of the will? ... the holy Apostle Paul says here expressly that the law was unable to condemn [overcome] sin, or even the weakness which proceeds from the flesh. This is nothing else but the doctrine which I have so frequently been insisting upon, that a fulfilling of the law through our own efforts is impossible; it cannot even be said that we have the power to will and to be able, in such a way as God would have us, viz. by grace [thus it is possible to us to perform what is naturally good]; for otherwise grace would not be necessary, but only useful, and otherwise the sin of Adam would not have corrupted our nature, but have left it unimpaired.... It is true that the law of nature is written in the hearts of all; reason also has a natural desire for what is good, but this is selfish, being directed to our own good, not to that which pleases God; only faith working by love is directed towards God. All that nature desires and acquires, goodness, wisdom, virtue and whatever else there is, are evil goods (‘male bona sunt’), because nature, by original sin, is blinded in its knowledge and chained in its affections, and therefore cannot know God, nor love Him above all things nor yet refer all to Him. Therefore it follows that, without faith and love, man is unable to desire, have, or do anything that is good, but only evil, even when he does what is good.” “Without love, i.e. without the assistance of an external and higher power, he sins continually against the law ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ for this commandment requires that we should not appropriate or seek anything for ourselves, but live, act and think for God in all things. This commandment is simply beyond us.”

  His object in thus disparaging liberty is not for the present grounded on the Almighty Power of God, as though this stood in its way, or, as was the case later, on predestination, as though its irrefutable decree were incompatible with liberty, but merely on his exaggeration of the results of original sin with regard to doing what is good (i.e. on concupiscence); he simply moves along the old lines of his distaste for good works and for so-called self-righteousness.

  His misinterpretation of the Scholastics, due partly to ignorance, partly to the strength of his prejudice against them, here did him very notable service. He says on one occasion: “In their arbitrary fashion they make out that, on the infusion of grace, the whole of original sin is remitted in everyone just like all actual sin, as though sin could thus be removed at once, in the same way as darkness is dispelled by light.... It is true their Aristotle made sin and righteousness to consist in works. Either I never understood them, or they did not express themselves well.” Here there can be no doubt that the former hypothesis is the correct one. That he did not understand his teachers and the school books is apparent from the following remark: If sin were completely removed in confession (“omnia ablata et evacuata”), then he who comes from confession ought to prefer himself to all others, and not look upon himself as a sinner like the rest. Even the Occamists never provided the slightest ground for such an inference, though they admitted in the justified the entire remission of all sin, original as well as actual. Luther had said in the very passage of the Commentary on Romans just quoted: “the remission of sin is, it is true, a real remission, yet not a removal of sin; the removal is only to be hoped for (“quod non sit ablatio peccati, nisi in spe”) from the giving of grace; grace commences the process of the removal in this way, that the sin is no longer imputed as sin.” But, without recalling his own admission that he may possibly have misunderstood the Scholastics, he goes on to speak of the “deliria” of such Doctors.

  5. Luther rudely sets aside the older doctrine of Virtue and Sin

  In his Commentary on Romans Luther enters upon the domain of theological and philosophical discussion regarding the questions of natural and supernatural morality, the state of grace and the infused habit, sometimes with subtilty, sometimes with coarse invective, but owing to the limits of the present work we are unable to follow him except quite cursorily.

  The manner in which he flings his “curses” at the doctrines of Scholasticism is distinctive of him; he says they are entirely compounded of pride and ignorance with regard to sin, to God and the law; “cursed be the word ‘formatum charitate,’ and also the distinction between works according to the substance of the deed and the intention of the Lawgiver.” There is perhaps no previous instance of a learned, exegetical treatise intended for academic consumption being thus spiced with curses.

  Certain of Luther’s remarks on his practical experience call for consideration. Such is the following: “Everywhere in the Church great relapses after confession are now noticeable. People are confident that they are justified instead of first awaiting justification, and therefore the devil has an easy task with such false assurance of safety, and overthrows men. All this is due to making righteousness consist in works. But whoever thinks like a Christian can find this out for himself.”

  He gives the following exhortation with great emphasis and almost as though he had made an astounding discovery: “Whoever goes to confession, let him not believe that he gets rid of his burden and can then live in peace.” His new doctrine of sin, which he discloses in the same passage, lies at the bottom of this; the baptised and the absolved must on no account forthwith consider themselves free from sin, on the contrary “they must not fancy themselves sure of the righteousness they have obtained and allow their hands to drop listlessly as though they were not conscious of any sin, for they have yet to fight against it and exterminate it with sighs and tears, with sadness and effort.”

  “Sin, therefore, still remains in the spiritual man for his exercise in the life of grace, for the humbling of his pride, for the driving back of his presumption; whoever does not exert himself zealously in the struggle against it, is in danger of being condemned even though he cease to sin any more (‘sine dubio habet, unde damnetur’). We must carry on a war with our desires, for they are culpable (‘culpa’), they are really sins and render us worthy of damnation; only the mercy of God does not impute them to us (‘imputare’) when we fight manfully against them, calling upon God’s grace.”

  There are few passages in the Commentary where his false conception of the entire corruption of human nature by original sin and concupiscence comes out so plainly as in the words just quoted. We see here too how this conception leads him to the denial of all liberty for doing what is good, and to the idea of imputation.

  We can well understand that he needed St. Augustine to assist him to cover all this. And yet, as though to emphasise his own devious course, he quotes, among other passages, one in which Augustine confutes the view of any sin being present in man simply by reason of concupiscence.

  “If we do not consent to concupiscence,” Augustine says, “it is no sin in those who are regenerate, so that, even if the ‘Non concupisces’ is infringed, yet the injunction of Jesus Sirach (xviii. 30) ‘Go not after thy lusts’ is observed. It is merely a manner of speaking to call concupiscence sin (“modo quodam loquendi”), because it sprang from sin, and, when it is victorious, causes sin.” To this statement of the Father of the Church, which is so antagonistic to his own ideas, Luther can only add: that, certainly, concupiscence is in this way merely the cause and effect of sin, but not formally sinful (“causaliter et effectualiter, non formaliter”); Augustine hi
mself had taught in another passage, that owing to the mere existence of concupiscence, we are able to do what is good only in an imperfect way, not well and perfectly (“facere, non perficere”; cp. Rom vii. 18); that we ought, however, to strive to act well and perfectly “if we wish to attain to the perfection of righteousness” (“perficere bonum, est non concupiscere”).

  St. Augustine’s words, which are much to the point if taken in the right sense, only encouraged Luther in his opposition to the Scholastics; he points out to them that Augustine’s manner is not theirs, and that at least he supports his statements by Holy Scripture when speaking of the desires which persist without the consent of the will; they on the other hand come along without Bible proofs and thus with less authority; those old Doctors quieted consciences with the voice of the Apostle, but these new ones do not do so at all, rather they force the Divine teaching into the bed of their own abstractions; for instance, they derive from Aristotle their theory as to how virtues and vices dwell in the soul, viz. as the form exists in the subject; all comprehension of the difference between flesh and spirit is thus made impossible.

  The question which here forces itself upon Luther, viz. how virtue and vice exist in the soul, is of fundamental importance for his view of ethics, and, as it frequently occurs in the Commentary, it must not be passed over.

  When he says that virtues and vices do not adhere to the soul, he means the same as what he elsewhere expresses more clearly, viz. that “it depends merely on the gracious will of God whether a thing is good or bad.”

  “Nothing is good of its own nature, nothing is bad of its own nature; the will of God makes it good or bad.”

  This is the merest Nominalism, akin to Occam’s paradox that “hatred of God, theft and adultery might be not merely not wicked, but even meritorious were the will of God to command them.”

  From such ideas of Occam Luther advanced to the following: “The will of God decides whether I am pleasing to Him or not.”

  This explains the proposition which frequently appears, in the Commentary on Romans and elsewhere, that man is at the same time righteous and a sinner, that the righteous man has the left foot still in sin and the right in grace.

  In the Commentary he attacks self-complacency in the performance of good works with the cry: “Good works are not something that can please because they are good or meritorious, but because they have been chosen by God from eternity as pleasing to Himself,” words which presuppose that only the imputation matters. “Therefore,” he continues, “works do not render us good, but our goodness, or rather the goodness of God, makes us good and our works good; for in themselves they would not be good, and they are or are not good in so far as God accounts them, or does not account them good (‘quantum ille reputat vel non reputat’). Our own accounting or not accounting does not matter in the least. Whoever keeps this before him is always filled with fear, and waits with apprehension to see how God’s sentence will fall out. This puts an end to all that puffing up of self and quarrelling, so beloved of the proud ‘iustitiarii,’ who are so sure of their good works.”

  “Even the very definition of virtue which Aristotle gives,” he concludes, “is all wrong, as though, forsooth, virtue made us perfect and its work rendered us worthy of praise. The truth is simply that it makes us praiseworthy in our own eyes and commends our works to us; but this is abominable in God’s sight, while the contrary is pleasing to Him.”

  As a matter of fact, Scholasticism, basing its teaching on Aristotle, considered virtue and vice as something real and objective, as qualities of the soul which adhere to it inwardly and “inform” it, i.e. impart to it a spiritual form and become part of it in the same way as material things have their special qualities, for instance, their natural colour without which they do not exist. These, as a matter of fact, were merely learned ways of expressing the fundamental truth naturally perceived by all, viz. that evil deeds and vices render a man evil, and good deeds and virtues render him good; no sane mind could conceive of a theory of imputation by which good is made evil or evil good.

  Luther was naturally obliged by his new theology of imputation to declare war on the older theological view of the existence of virtue and vice in the soul. It was in so doing that, in his excitement, he uttered the curses above referred to (). It was no mere question of words, but of the very foundation of his new theology, a fact which makes his excitement comprehensible.

  As a matter of fact, by his application of the theory of imputation he was heading for a “transformation of all values” and drifting towards the admission of a “future life of good and evil” long before modern philosophy had confidently opened up a similar perspective.

  6. Preparation for Justification

  Notwithstanding the fact that, according to the above exposition in the Commentary on Romans, man has absolutely no freedom of choice for doing what is good and that we cannot know with regard to our works how God will account them, Luther frequently speaks in the same book of the preparation necessary for obtaining justification, namely, by works. Here his feeling and his eloquence come into full play at the expense of clear theology. He does not even take into account the irresistibility of grace, which is the point he is bound to arrive at finally. Christ alone does the work, he says (“soli Christo iustitia relinquitur, soli ipsi opera gratiæ et spiritus”). On the other hand, the bringing about of justification, at least so far as preparation goes, is imposed upon man. There are “works which predispose to justification,” he teaches (“opera quæ fiunt præparatorie ad iustificationem acquirendam”). “Whoever by his works disposes himself for the grace of justification is already, to a certain extent, righteous; for righteousness largely consists in the will to be righteous.”

  “Such works,” he continues, “are good, because we do not trust in them, but by them prepare ourselves for justification by which alone we may hope for righteousness.” “Therefore we must pray earnestly, be zealous in good works and mortify ourselves (‘castigandum’) until readiness and joyousness develop in the will and its old inclination to sin is overcome by grace.”

  “For the grace [of justification] will not be given to man without this personal agriculture of himself” (“non dabitur gratia sine ista agricultura sui ipsius”).

  We must continue to “look upon such works as merely preparatory, just as all works of righteousness performed in grace, prepare in their turn for an increase of justification, according to Apoc. xxii. 11.” “Only so can we be saved, namely, by repenting that we are laden with sin and are living in sin, and by imploring of God our deliverance. He also, in other passages, emphasises the fact that works are necessary for justification as its preparation: “We must do works in order to obtain justification (‘opera pro iustificatione quærenda’), works of grace and faith; they confirm the desire for justification and the fulfilment of the law, but we may not think that we are justified by them.” “Rather, true believers spend their whole life in seeking justification ... whoever seeks it with the heart and by works, is without doubt already justified in God’s sight.” Towards the end of the Commentary he describes in emphatic words, which will be quoted below, the humility and sighing which should bring about justification.

  We need not here specify how far the demand for individual effort is here a reminiscence of his Catholic training, or more particularly due to the school of Occam. It is an undoubted fact that Occamism and pseudo-mysticism are here rubbing shoulders, and that Luther himself is aware of the incongruity.

  7. Appropriation of the righteousness of Christ by humility — Neither “Faith only” nor assurance of Salvation

  Luther’s words, quoted above, where he says that Christ fulfilled the law for us, He made His righteousness ours and our sins His (see above, f.), show that he applied in the fullest manner the theory of imputation to justification. Man remains a sinner, but the sin is not imputed to him, he is accounted righteous by the imputing to him of what is quite alien to him, viz. the righteousness of Christ. Thus h
e is at one and the same time the friend and the enemy of God.

  The verb “to justify” as used in Holy Scripture the author of the Commentary on Romans simply takes to mean “to account as righteous,” or “to declare righteous.” Thus he says: “The doers of the law (according to Rom. ii. 13) are justified, i.e. they are accounted righteous. In Psalm cxlii. we read: ‘In Thy sight no man living shall be justified,’ i.e. be accounted righteous.... The Pharisee in the Temple wished to ‘justify himself’ (Luke x. 29), i.e. to declare his justification.”

  “Whoever seeks peace in his righteousness, seeks it in the flesh.” “Christ only is righteousness and truth, and in Him all is given us in order that by Him we may be righteous and true and escape eternal damnation.” “This justification takes place (according to Paul) outside of works of the law, i.e. without works which are outside of faith and grace, that is, which come from the law, which forces by fear and attracts by temporal promises. The Apostle calls those only works of faith which proceed from the spirit of freedom through the love of God, and these can only be done by the man who is justified by faith. The works of the law however do not help towards justification, but are rather a hindrance because they prevent a man from looking upon himself as unrighteous and in need of justification.”

  “Christ, according to the Apostle, has become our righteousness (1 Cor. i. 30), i.e. all the good that we possess is exterior, it is Christ’s. It is only in us by faith and hope in Him.” “Our fulness and our righteousness is outside of us, within we are empty and poor.... The pious know that sin alone dwells in them, but that this is covered over and not imputed on account of Christ.... The beauty of Christ conceals our hideousness.”