According to him, the prelates and the Church have a perfect right to condemn false teachers however much the latter may “utter their foolish cry of ‘we have the truth, we believe, we hear, we call upon God.’” “Just as though they must be of God because they seem to themselves to be of God. No, we have an authority which has been implanted in the Church, and the Roman Church has this authority in her hands. Therefore the preachers of the Church, unless they fall into error, preach with assurance [on account of their commission]. But false teachers are pleased with their own words, because they are according to their own ideas. They appear to demand the greatest piety, but are themselves governed by their own opinion, and their self-will.” “Whoever declares that he is sent by God must either give proof of his mission by wonders and heavenly testimony, as the Apostles did, or he must be recognised and commissioned by an authority confirmed by Heaven. In the latter case, he must stand and teach in humble subjection to such authority, ever ready to submit to its judgment; he must speak what he is commissioned to speak and not what his own taste leads him to invent.... Anathema is the weapon,” he exclaims — unconscious of his own future— “which lays low the heretics.”
Whenever he gets the chance he magnifies the corruption of the Church so much that his expressions might lead one to suppose that the saving institution founded by Christ was either completely decayed and fallen away or was at least on the road to forsaking its vocation as teacher and as the guardian of morals. His complaints may, it is true, be in part accounted for by the impetuosity which carries him away and by his rhetorical turn. He probably did not at that time really think that a healthy reformation from within was absolutely impossible. Still, had anyone attempted to carry out his immature and excessive demands for reform, they would hardly have achieved much in the way of a real regeneration. His ideas of a radical change were deeply ingrained in his mind; this we naturally gather from his bringing them forward so frequently and under such varied forms. In his mystical moods he sees the errors and abuses opposed to the “Word” swollen into a veritable “deluge”; his professorial chair is only just above the waves. Hence he will cry out as loudly as he can. In his voice we can, however, detect a false note, and his exaggerations and all his stormings do not avail to inspire us with confidence. He is too full of his own subjectivity, too impetuous and passionate to be a reformer, though his other gifts might have fitted him for the office. His very sensitiveness to neglect of duty in others, had it been purified and disciplined, aided by his eloquence, might have been able to inaugurate a movement of reform. In many of his sayings he comes nigh the position of a Catholic reformer, and even, at times, makes exaggerated demands on obedience and the need of feeling with the Church.
We may add the following to the complaints above mentioned, as occurring in the Commentary on Romans with regard to the state of the Church.
“The Pope and the chief pastors of the Church,” so runs Luther’s general and bitter charge, “have become corrupt and their works are deserving of malediction; they stand forth at the present day as seducers of the Christian people” (“seducti et seducentes populum Christi a vera cultura Dei”). He waxes eloquent not only against their too frequent granting of indulgences — from which in their avarice they derived worldly profit for the Church — but also against their luxurious lives which fill the whole world with the vices of Sodom, and others too; under their wicked stewardship the faithful throughout the Church have altogether forgotten what good works, faith and humility are, and make their eternal salvation depend upon external observances and foolish legends. Even those who have more insight and are better men, are all self-righteous and more like idolaters than Christians.
The Apostle Paul, he says, expounds in the Epistle to the Romans, the command of loving our neighbour (xii. 6 seq.), but is this followed by the Church? Instead of fulfilling it “we busy ourselves with trivialities, build churches, increase the possessions of the Church, heap money together, multiply the ornaments and vessels of silver and gold in the churches, erect organs and other pomps which please the eye. We make piety to consist in this. But where is the man who sets himself to carry out the Apostle’s exhortations, not to speak of the great prevailing vices of pride, arrogance, avarice, immorality and ambition.” Not long after this outburst, speaking in a milder strain, he says: “We exalt ourselves so as to instruct the whole world, and hardly understand ourselves what we are teaching.” “People without training or knowledge of the world, sent by their bishops and religious superiors, undertake to instruct men, but really only add to the number of chatterers and windbags.”
On another occasion he declares, people think bustle in the church, loud organ playing and pompous solemnities at Mass are all that is needed; for such things collections are made, whereas alms-giving for the relief of our neighbour is not accounted anything. Nothing is thought of swearing, lying or backbiting, even on Feast Days, but if anyone eats flesh-meat or eggs on a Friday, he gives great scandal, so unreasonable are all people nowadays (“adeo nunc omnes desipiunt”). What is needed to-day is to do away with the Fast Days and to abrogate many of the Festivals ... the whole Christian Code ought to be purified and changed, and the solemnities, ceremonies, devotions and the adorning of the churches reduced. But all this is on the increase daily, so that faith and charity are stifled, and avarice, arrogance and worldliness grow apace. What is worse, the faithful hope to find in this their eternal salvation and do not trouble about the inner man.
The lawyers, he says, speaking in a mystical vein, act quite wrongly when, as soon as they see that anyone has the law on his side, they encourage him to assert his rights (“qui statim quod secundum iura iustum sciunt, prosequendum suadent”). “On the contrary, every Christian should rejoice in suffering injustice, even in matters of the greatest moment (‘quoad maximas iustitias nostras’).... But almost the whole world runs after the contrary error [i.e. sternly asserts its rights]. Cardinals, bishops, princes act like the Jews did to the King of Babylon (2 Kings xxiv. 20; xxv. 1 ff.); they cling to their petty privileges, lose sight of morality and so perish.” Someone should have told Duke George (of Saxony) when he fought against the Duke of Frisia: “Your own and your people’s deserts are not so great that you should not rather have patiently allowed yourself to be chastised by that rebel, who, though unrighteous, was the executor of God’s righteous judgment. Calm yourself therefore and acknowledge the Will of God.”
He says something similar to his own bishop, Hieronymus Schulz (Scultetus) of Brandenburg, and to another bishop, probably Wilhelm von Honstein, Bishop of Strasburg. The latter had put in force the ecclesiastical statutes against the infringers of the sanctity of the church. Luther says: “Why trouble a town with this wretched matter? It is merely a question of human regulations; but if the bishop desired to enforce God’s laws, he would not need to leave his own house; he is not indeed acting wrongly, but he is swallowing a camel and straining at gnats (Matt. xxiii. 24).... But the bishops thirst for vengeance, they brand the criminals and themselves deserve to be worse branded. Would to God that the time may come when rights and privileges and all who worship them are consigned to perdition! Ambition and unbelief should not be allowed to triumph over those condemned for transgressing the statutes.”
“I say this with pain, but I am obliged to because I have an Apostolic commission to teach. My duty is to point out to all the wrong they are committing, even to those in high places.”
In accordance with this, the young Professor loudly blames Pope Julius II. In his quarrel with the Republic of Venice “this advice should have been given him: ‘Holy Father, Venice is doing you a wrong, but the Roman Church deserves it on account of her faults, yea, she deserves even worse. Therefore do nothing, such is the Will of God.’ But the Pope replied: ‘No, no, let us vindicate our rights by force.’” “He chastised them [the Venetians] with great bloodshed because they had sinned grievously and seized upon the possessions of the Church; he brought them back to the Churc
h and so gained great merit. But the horrible corruption of the Papal Curia and the mountain of the most terrible immorality, pomp, avarice, ambition and sacrilege is accounted no sin.”
On another occasion, after a no less forcible outburst against Rome, he demands the abolition of “false piety”: This so-called piety must no longer be permitted, as though it were merely a weakness; but in Rome they do not trouble about doing away with it, there is there nothing but the freedom of the flesh; “almost all are wanting in charity.” “I fear that in these days we are all on the road to utter destruction.”
We must listen, he says — alluding to the formalism which he thinks is apparent everywhere — to the “inward word,” which often speaks to us quite differently from the injunctions to which we are accustomed. “The wisdom of fools always looks more to the work than to the word; it thinks itself able to gauge the meaning and value of the word from the value or worthlessness of the deeds”; what we should do is the contrary; the precious, inestimable word must always resound in our hearts and direct all our outward actions. The “spirit of the believer is subject to no one,” “the spirit is free as regards all things”; “all exterior things are free to those who are in the spirit.” “The bondage [of charity] is the highest liberty.”
Such words form a quite obvious preliminary to the “Evangelical freedom” which he was afterwards to vindicate. He thus gives a much wider application to the ideas he had met with in Tauler than was in the mind of that pious mystic. Tauler writes: “I tell you that you must not submit your inner man to anyone, but to God only. But your exterior man you must submit in a true and real humility to God and to all creatures.” Luther says what on the surface seems quite similar: the Christian is free and master of all things and is subject to no one (by faith), and yet at the same time a willing servant of all and subject to all (by charity). Yet, both in the Commentary on Romans and in the works which were soon to follow, “the willing servant” is more and more ousted by false ideas of independence, so that a danger arises of only the “free master of all things” remaining. In the Commentary on Romans all exterior submission to the Church is, in principle, menaced by a liberty which, appealing to the inward experience of the Word and a deeper conception of religion, seeks to overstep all barriers.
The confused ideas for which he was beholden to his pseudo-mysticism were in great part the cause of this and of other errors.
9. The Mystic in the Commentary on Romans
Since the appearance in print of Luther’s Commentary on Romans it has been possible to perceive more clearly the ominous power which false mysticism had gained over the young author.
His misapprehension of some of the principal elements of Tauler’s sermons and of the “Theologia Deutsch” stands out in sharp relief in these lectures on the Pauline Epistle, and we see more plainly how the obscure ideas he finds in the mystics at once amalgamate with his own. The connection between the pseudo-mysticism which he has built up on the basis of true mysticism, and the method of theology which he is already pursuing, appears here so great, and he follows so closely the rather elastic figures and thoughts provided by the mystical science of the soul, that we are almost tempted, after reading his exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, to ask whether all his intellectual mistakes were not an outcome of his mysticism. The fact is, however, that he began his study of mysticism only after having commenced formulating the principles of his new world of thought. It was only after the ferment had gone on working for a considerable time that he chanced upon certain mystic works. Yet, strange to say, the mysticism with which he then became acquainted was not that German variety which had already been infected with the errors of Master Eckhart, but the sounder mysticism which had avoided the pitfalls. It is a tragic coincidence that mysticism, the most delicate blossom of the theology of the Middle Ages and of true Catholicism, should have served to confirm him in so many errors. True mysticism has in all ages been a protest against all moral cowardice and inertia, against tepidity and self-complacent mediocrity; false mysticism, on the other hand, debases itself to Quietism and even to Antinomianism; the world has lived to see pseudo-mysticism deny evil the better to permit it. Even true mysticism is constantly open to the danger not only of conscious and intentional exaggeration of its theses, but of unintentional misapprehension.
Misapprehension is a misfortune to which mysticism was ever exposed, owing mainly to the inadequacy of human language to express the mystic’s thoughts, whereas Scholasticism, thanks to its clear-cut terminology, has been spared such a fate, and for the same reason has never been in favour with confused and cloudy minds. Tauler had originally been trained in the Scholasticism of St. Thomas of Aquin, and in the teaching of the Frankfort author of the “Theologia Deutsch” the true principles of the old school still shine out. This, however, did not save these writers from having formerly been considered, by Protestants, precursors of Luther’s doctrines. Denifle, by his studies on these and the later mystics, threw such valuable light on the subject that the Protestant theologian Wilhelm Braun, in the work he recently devoted to tracing the development of Luther, says: “it is wrong for Protestants to claim mysticism as a pre-Reformation reforming movement; this Denifle has proved in his epoch-making researches.”
False Passivity
As regards the important new data furnished by the Commentary on Romans on Luther’s mysticism, the editor himself admits in the preface that “the ideal of resignation [preached by the Catholic mystics] was raised by Luther to an unconditional passivity and to a real system of Quietism, which he completely identified with the theme of the Epistle to the Romans and with the piety of St. Augustine. In this he found the bond of union combining all his experiences. Mysticism it is which lends its deep and fiery hue to his thoughts; where Luther is describing the most intimate processes and gives their highest expression to the thoughts which inspire him, it is mysticism which is speaking through him ... the complete and unconditional surrender of man to God.”
Luther gives in a peculiar fashion his reasons for taking such a standpoint: “The Nature of God demands that He should first destroy and annihilate everything there is in us before He imparts His gifts. For it is written: ‘The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich, He bringeth down to hell and bringeth back again.’ By this most gracious plan He renders us fit for the reception of His gifts and His works. We are then receptive to His works and plans when our own plans and our own works have ceased, and we become quite passive towards God (‘quando nostra consilia cessant et opera quiescunt et efficimur pure passivi respectu Dei’) both as regards exterior and interior activity.... Then the ‘utterable sighs’ commence, then ‘the Spirit comes and helps our infirmity.’” It is in the description of this “suffering and bearing of God” that he expressly quotes Tauler as the teacher of the higher form of prayer, adding: “Yes, yes, ‘we know not how we should pray,’ therefore the Spirit is necessary to assist us in our weakness.” “As a woman remains passive in conception, so we must remain passive to the first grace and eternal salvation. For our soul is Christ’s bride. Before grace, it is true, we pray and implore, but when grace comes and the soul is to be impregnated by the Spirit, then it must neither pray nor act, but only endure. To the soul this seems hard and it is downcast, for that the soul should be without act of the understanding and the will, that is much like sinking into darkness, destruction and annihilation (‘in perditionem et annihilationem’); from this prospect she shrinks back in horror, but in so doing she often deprives herself of the most precious gifts of grace.”
It was just on this point that Luther most completely misapprehended Tauler. It is true that this mediæval mystic speaks strongly against any too great esteem of human activity, and that he also recommends the spiritual man, in certain circumstances, to “refuse all exterior works the better to devote himself with the necessary submission and in entire peace” to interior communication with his Maker and Highest Good, and, as he says, “to suffer God.” But he does not t
hereby recommend man to long after a state without thought or will, or after mere nothingness — in order to magnify God and His powers alone; according to Tauler, grace does not work in the soul “without the co-operation of the understanding and the will.”
The Quenching of the “Good Spark in the Soul”
Luther in the above recommendation to passivity falsely assumes that the soul is entirely corrupted by original sin and only offends God with its acts. This also appears clearly in the Commentary on Romans. Protestants themselves now admit that Luther deviated from the standpoint of the orthodox mystics, particularly from that of Tauler, and that “in the view of the mystics of the Middle Ages there is no doubt that the natural good in man outweighs the natural evil. The central point in which all the lines of mystic theology converge is this indestructible goodness.” So speaks a Protestant theologian.
In Gerson, the mystic whom Luther had studied in his early days at Erfurt, he must have met with the beautiful teaching, that the soul had received from God a natural tendency towards what is good, that this is “the virginal portion of the soul,” which is the “source and seat of mystical theology.” Tauler is fond of treating of this “noble spark of fire in the soul,” of “this interior nobility which lies hidden in the depths.” The Scholastics, too, unanimously teach this disposition to good which remains after original sin.
Luther, when opposing the good tendency, attacks only the Scholastics, not the mystics; he declares that all the errors on grace and nature which he has to withstand entered through the hole which the Scholastics made with their “syntheresis.” One thing is certain, viz. that he was wrong in foisting his view of the absolute corruption of the human race on the mystics; “he could not,” the Protestant theologian above referred to admits, “quite truthfully invoke the support of the mystics for his assertions.” The doctrines which Tauler advances in the very context in which his blame of the self-righteous occurs, viz. that there is no righteousness without personal acts, that even the sinner can do what is good, that he, more especially, must prepare himself for the grace of justification, pass unheeded in Luther’s exposition of the Epistle to the Romans. “Luther overlooked this series [of testimonies given by Tauler]; only the statements regarding the righteous by works made any impression on him; his polemics are directed against those who serve two masters, who wish to please God and the world and to do great things for God’s sake; these are the people who are at heart satisfied with themselves.”
Collected Works of Martin Luther Page 597