Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  “Terrible pride prevails among the hypocrites and men of the law, who, because they believe in Christ, think themselves already saved and sufficiently righteous,” these claim to attain to grace and the Divine Sonship “by faith alone” (“ex fide tantum”), “as though we were saved by Christ without the performance of any works or acts of our own” (“sic ut ipsi nihil operentur, nihil exhibeant de fide”). Such men possess too much faith, or rather none at all.

  While he was thus wavering between reminiscences of the Catholic teaching and his own pseudo-mystical ideas on justification and imputation, his mind must indeed have been in a state of incessant agitation, so that uneasiness and fear became his natural element. “As we are unable to keep God’s commandments and are therefore always unrighteous, there remains nothing for us but to be in constant fear of the Judgment (‘ut iudicium semper timeamus’), and to pray for pardon, or rather for the non-imputing of our unrighteousness.” “We are to rejoice, according to the Psalmist (ii. 11), before God on account of His Mercy, but with trembling on account of the sin which deserves His Judgment.”

  In 1525 he wrote: To leave man no free will for what is good and to make him altogether dependent on God’s predestination “seems, it is true, cruel and intolerable; countless of the greatest minds of previous ages have taken offence at this. And who, indeed, is there whom the idea does not offend? I myself have more than once been greatly scandalised at it and plunged into an abyss of despair so that I wished I had never been created. But then I learned how wholesome despair is and how close it lies to grace.”

  This he “learned,” or thought he learned, through his doctrine of assurance of salvation through faith.

  “The forgiveness offered us by God in His Word” (if we may here anticipate his later teaching), became for him a definite object of sanctifying and saving faith, to the extent that faith came to be identical in his eyes with fiducia.

  Faith is, as he says, “a real heartfelt confidence in Christ.” “He strongly emphasises at the same time the relation between what is here proposed for belief and the individual believer; I believe that God is gracious to me and forgives me. That, says Luther [later], makes the Article of the Forgiveness of Sins particularly difficult, for though the other Articles of Faith may be more difficult if once we begin to speak of them and try to understand them, yet in the Article of the Forgiveness of Sins what presents the greatest difficulty is, that ‘each one must accept this for himself in particular.’ This was hard to a man because he must stand greatly in awe of the anger of God and His Judgment; but when the Article of the Forgiveness of Sins comes home to us and we really experience its meaning, then the other Articles concerning God, the Creator, the Son of God, etc., ‘also come home to us and enter into our experience.’ And, according to Luther, true faith consists in this, that I believe and am assured that God is my God because He speaks to me and forgives my sins.” While taking the acceptance of the whole of revelation for granted, he magnifies fiducial faith to such an extent, that many Protestant theologians have come to consider a trusting faith in Christ to be his only essential requirement, in fact to imagine that in this alone faith consists; claiming to be merely following Luther, they deny that the acceptance of individual points of faith, i.e. Articles of Faith, can be a necessary condition for salvation.

  Fiducial faith, with its assurance of salvation was the way which Luther discovered out of all his troubles about two years after the termination of his Commentary on Romans, in 1518, or the beginning of 1519. This discovery is a remarkable event, which stands alone, and with which we must concern ourselves after first examining what led up to it. From the place where it was made, viz. the tower belonging to the monastery, it might be styled the Tower Experience.

  The incident remained imbedded in Luther’s mind till his old age; he frequently alludes to it, and though in some of its details his memory did not serve him aright and his apprehension of it may have been somewhat modified by party prejudice, yet the main elements of the story appear to be historically quite credible. He fixes not merely the place, but also the time of the incident, namely, the commencement of his second course of lectures on the Psalms (1518-19), i.e. two matters which ever serve as the most reliable framework for the picture of an event long past. From what he relates between 1532 and 1545, one thing is directly certain regarding this purely spiritual, and for that reason rather less tangible incident, viz. that it was an experience arrived at only after the acutest mental anguish and which Luther ever after regarded as a special illumination vouchsafed to him by God. It is connected with Romans i. 17: “For the justice of God is revealed therein [in the Gospel] from faith unto faith as it is written [Hab. ii. 4]: ‘The just man liveth by faith.’”

  What is indirectly no less certain, from the unanimity of the testimonies, and from the course of his development as vouched for by his writings, is that the discovery in question was really that of the assurance of salvation.

  The various opinions which have been expressed on the account of the event given by Luther (see below, ff.) in 1545, and the numerous attempts which have been made to fix a date for the same, render it necessary to trace chronologically the development of the doctrine of faith and salvation in Luther’s mind till the year 1519. We shall see that his statement as to the time when the event took place (1518-19) not only presents no difficulty, but that such a termination to his experiences was naturally to be expected.

  Prior to 1518-19 the absolute assurance of salvation which appears afterwards is nowhere distinctly expressed in Luther’s doctrine on faith and salvation.

  Passages to the contrary, which have been quoted from the imprinted lectures on Hebrews delivered previous to the autumn of 1517, need not be interpreted in the sense of fiducial faith and assurance of salvation. They refer rather indistinctly to the effects of faith without the works which Luther had now come to detest, and attack “self-righteousness,” as in the Commentary on Romans (“sola fides ... quæ non nititur operibus illis [orationibus et præparatoriis”]). They only hint vaguely at the road he will follow later.

  Again, in the Indulgence theses of October 31, 1517, directed against Tetzel, the assurance of salvation is not expressed, and we find a recommendation “to trust rather to enter heaven by much tribulation than by security and peace.” In place of pax, pax! he, as a mystic, would prefer to exhort the people with the cry: crux, crux! (thesis 93).

  Neither do the theses of the Heidelberg Disputation in April, 1518, contain the assurance of salvation, although theses 25-8 touch upon justification and, as against the law, extol the great effects of the faith which Christ works in us.

  On the other hand, the Resolutions to the Indulgence theses which appeared shortly after (1518) treat to a certain extent of the subject and attempt to give a solution. There we read: “In the confusion [in the mind of the man who is perturbed by thoughts of sin and rejection] God works a strange work in order to accomplish His work”; grace is infused (“infunditur gratia”), while man still fancies he “is about to be damned.” In order to rid himself of his “despair,” he goes to Confession “so that the priest may declare him absolved and give peace to his conscience.” “The man who is to be absolved must take great care lest he doubt the remission of his sins.” Faith in Christ’s words to Peter: “Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth,” etc., does all. The whole passage, which describes justification in the fanciful and paradoxical language of the mystic, is worth quoting: “When God begins to justify a man, He first damns him; He is about to build, but first He pulls down, to heal but first He deals wounds, to vivify but first He condemns to death. He crushes a man, humbles him by the knowledge of himself and his sins and makes him tremble, so that, under a sense of his misery, he cries out [with Holy Scripture] ‘there is no peace for my bones because of my sins, there is no health in my flesh because of Thy wrath. For the mountains melt away before the face of God, He sends out His arrows, He troubles us with His anger and with the breath of His wrath
. The sinner sinks down into hell and shame covers his face. David frequently experienced this confusion and tribulation and describes it with sighs in several of the Psalms. Salvation has its origin in this confusion, because ‘the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.’” The ways of God are in a tempest and a whirlwind, according to Nahum (i. 3); man’s destruction is to Him “the most pleasing sacrifice,” the animal sacrificed is torn in pieces, the hide is stripped off, and it is slaughtered. Luther in three passages from the Prophets, describes the “infusion of grace,” which man is apt to mistake for the outpouring of the Divine wrath upon him.

  Because the man who is justified is still “without peace and consolation,” not trusting his own judgment, he begs the priest for comfort in Confession. “He is led to cling to the judgment of another not because he is a spiritual superior, or because he possesses any power, but on account of the words of Christ Who cannot lie: ‘Whatsoever thou shalt loose,’ etc. Faith in these words has worked peace of conscience while the priest looses by virtue of the same.” “Christ is our peace. Without faith in His word, no one will ever be at peace even after more than a thousand absolutions from the Pope. Thanks be to God for this sweet power of the priest.”

  Such words of gratitude do not disguise the fact, that the sacrament of penance is stripped of its meaning by the assurance, that “the remission of guilt takes place by the infusion of grace before the priest has given absolution.”

  Above all it is plain we have not yet here that assurance of salvation, as Luther held it at a later date:

  “Whoever seeks peace in another way [than through the absolution of the priest],” he says in the same passage, “say, by his own inward experience, appears to be tempting God, and not seeking peace by faith.” With this denial of the validity of personal inward experience (“experientia intus”) he brushes aside an element which, scarcely a year later, he represents as essential. He says still more definitely: “The remission of guilt is not assured to us, as a general rule, except by the sentence of the priest, and not even by him unless we believe Christ’s promise with regard to loosing. But so long as we are not certain of the remission it is no remission.” “As the infusion of grace is hidden under the appearance of anger, man is still more uncertain of grace when it is present than when it is absent.”

  That Luther could rest satisfied with so shadowy and insufficient a conception can only be attributed to his state of mind at the time.

  He lays great stress on absolution in the Disputation of the year 1518 “For the calming of troubled consciences” (above, ). Here it is expressly stated, that the strongest assurance regarding the state of grace is to be derived from the priest’s absolution and the accompanying faith of the penitent Christian: “Whoever is absolved by the power of the keys must rather die and renounce all creatures than doubt of his absolution” (thesis 16). “Those who declare the remission of sins to be doubtful on account of the uncertainty of contrition, err to the point of denying the faith” (13), for “the forgiveness of sins is based much more upon faith in the word of Christ: ‘Whatsoever thou shalt loose,’ etc.” (9). “The power of the keys operates a sure and infallible work by the word and the command of Christ, when used in earnest.” (24). The concluding words of the Disputation already quoted elsewhere accordingly exhort to boundless confidence, while at the same time alluding significantly to the text which has risen on Luther’s horizon, though as yet he understands it only imperfectly: “The just man liveth by faith.”

  His state of uncertainty with regard to the appropriation of salvation caused Luther great disquietude. Other circumstances, particularly his feverish excitement at the outset of his public struggle, also contributed towards his inward unrest. The morbid fear of which he had never rid himself was also powerfully stirred.

  The supreme degree of this painful torment of soul may be gathered from the description he gives in the Resolutions.

  In this work, which appeared in August, 1518, in dealing with the 15th Indulgence thesis, he tries to prove that the punishment of Purgatory may be made up merely by fear and terror. Many of those living even now, he says, had experienced how high the flood of such interior sufferings can rise and how close they bring a man to despair. He would not quarrel with any who did not believe this, but those who had been through such trials were in a position to speak of them. Tauler treated of such pains in his German sermons and brought forward some examples; of course, to the Scholastics Tauler was unknown; they did not appreciate him, but he had found more real theology in this theologian who wrote in German than “among the whole of the Scholastics of all the universities.” He then proceeds, beginning with the very formula with which Paul introduces the account of his raptures: “I know a man” (Novi hominem), to describe the mystical interior sufferings which he had “frequently” experienced; though they had never persisted long, they were so “hellish,” that whoever had not undergone them himself was quite unable to speak of them. Had this consuming fire lasted only for the tenth part of an hour all a man’s bones were reduced to ashes.

  “God then appears to be horribly angered and with Him all creation. There is no possibility of flight, no comfort whether within or without, only a hollow accusing voice. The soul laments, according to the words of Scripture: ‘Lord I am cast away from Thy face,’ she dares not even say: ‘Chastise me not in Thy wrath.’ At this moment — inexplicable as it is — the soul is unable even to believe in its possible liberation, but only feels that the punishment is not at an end. It appears everlasting and unceasing. The soul finds nothing in its whole being but a bare longing for help, nothing but terrible sighing, though it knows not whence to implore assistance. Thus the soul, like Christ, is completely extenuated, all its bones are numbered, there is not a tissue in it which is not penetrated with the excruciating bitterness, with flight, with mournful anxiety and pain, and all for ever and ever. When a ball passes over a board every point of the line along which it travels bears the whole weight of the ball, though it does not receive the ball into itself. So, too, the eternal flood of pain passes over the soul and causes it to taste the whole endless weight of eternal pain in every part, but the pain is not permanently received into the soul, it does not last, but passes.”

  The above so strange and fantastic description incorporated in a Latin work written for the learned, in the interests of Luther’s psychology, calls for further consideration.

  Particular stress must here be laid on the false mysticism in which Luther was then entangled, and his free use of the fanciful language of certain of the mystics. Luther’s states had, however, nothing in common with those described in somewhat similar words by the healthier mystics, viz. the sore trial of the Mount of Olives through which the soul passes owing to the complete withdrawal of consolation. He, however, imagines he sees himself portrayed not only in such descriptions of the mystics, but also in mystical passages in the Psalms over which, at this time of change, he was fond of brooding. David’s cries ring in his ears; his experience of the hell in which the soul must dwell, of the life which draws nigh to hell, of the bones which are banished to the gate of hell, of the sinking into a dark sea, into the bowels of the earth under the heaped-up weight of endless misery.

  It must also be borne in mind that the Monk, with his pseudo-mystical ideas, cherished a gloomy conception of God, and held the terrible doctrine of the absolute predestination of the damned. Having wandered away from the Catholic teaching, with his views on man’s lack of free will, and the theory of arbitrary imputation by God, he found no answer in his troubled conscience to the question which weighed him down, namely, how to arrive at the assurance of a Gracious God. Confusion and interior pangs of conscience for a while gained the upper hand.

  Lastly, his peculiar morbid tendency to fear must also be taken into account, for it afforded an opportunity to the Tempter to add to his confusion by raising difficulties regarding the deficiencies of his new, self-chosen theology.

  Adolph Hausrath in his L
ife of Luther even speaks of periodical mental disturbances from which he suffered during the time he was a monk; the disturbing power inherent in the monastic practices, so he says, took possession of his sensitive nature with its strong feelings; Luther only escaped the danger of going mad by bravely bursting the fetters of the monastic Rule and the Popish Faith. In the strong inward combats which Luther endured at a later date Hausrath recognises a return of this affliction. In his second edition he has toned down this view of Luther’s periodical attacks of mental illness out of regard for the objections which had, not without reason, been urged against his statement. In Luther’s case, however, there is no reason for assuming any “monkish mental disease,” nor can he be proved to have suffered from any disturbance whatever of his mental functions at any time of his life. But if we take it that the night of the soul which he passed through, whether in the monastery or during his later struggle, had at its basis a peculiar physico-psychic disposition revealing a want of normal inward stability, then we can perhaps easily explain some other strange and at first blush inexplicable phenomena which his case presents.

  At any rate, the fundamental new dogma of the assurance of salvation was not the product of a clear, quiet, calm atmosphere of soul. It was born amidst unbearable inward mental confusion, and was a frantic attempt at self-pacification on the part of the Wittenberg Doctor whose active but unstable mind had already left the true course.