Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Contradictions formed an integral part of Luther’s psychology. Long pages of this work are full of them, though Luther seems quite unaware of his inconsistencies, obscurities and confusion. Conflicting lines of thought may be traced, similar to those which appeared in the Commentary on Romans (vol. i., ), while the author was still a young man. They indicate a mentality singularly deficient in exactitude and clearness. The workshop where his ideas were fashioned was assuredly not an orderly one.

  In the first place the main contention is very involved, while the statements that the will of the man who does what is evil is moved by God seem conflicting. The “movet, agit, rapit” in which the action of God on the will usually consists, does not here assert its sway; the Divine Omnipotence, which, as a rule, is the cause of all action, interferes here, either not at all, or at least less strongly than usual — God must not be made the direct author of sin. This illogical twisting of his theory is particularly noticeable where great sins of mighty consequence are in question. Is God to be regarded as having caused the Fall of Adam and the treason of Judas? Luther certainly does not answer this question in the affirmative so categorically as Melanchthon in his “Loci theologici.” Here he carefully avoids speaking of an irresistible impulse of the will given by God; for the time being we seem to lose sight altogether of God’s imperative and exclusive action.

  In the case of the betrayal of Judas, as Scheel points out, Luther does not mention any necessity “which compelled Judas to act as he did”; Luther seems, at least in certain passages, to look on that act as necessary, only because, having been foreseen by God, it “inevitably occurs at the time appointed.” Yet elsewhere he says: “His will [that of the traitor] was the work of God; God by His Almighty Power moved his will as He does all that is in the world.”

  A similar confusion is apparent in his statements concerning Adam’s Fall. Adam was not impelled to his sin, but the Spirit of God forsook him, and intentionally placed him in a position in which he could not do otherwise than fall — even though his will was as yet free and though as yet he felt no attraction towards evil as the result of original sin. May we then say after all that God brought about the Fall and was Himself the cause of the depravity of the whole human race through original sin? To this question, which Luther himself raises, the only answer he gives is: “He is God; of His willing there is no cause or reason,” because no creature is above Him and He Himself “is the rule of all things.” Because He wills a thing, it is good, “not because He must or ought so to will.” In the case of the creature it is otherwise; “His will must have reason and cause, not so, however, the will of the Creator.” What seems to follow from these Occamistic subtleties is, that Adam’s sin was after all “brought about by God,” and that Adam could not do otherwise than sin, even though God merely placed him in a position where sin was inevitable, but that he was nevertheless punished, and with him all his descendants. But is it so certain that in Adam’s case Luther excludes a real impulse, a real inner compulsion to transgress? The fact is that certain of his statements on this question present some difficulty. “Since God moves and does all, we must take it that He moves and acts even in Satan and in the godless.” It is true, according to Luther, that He acts in them “as He finds them, i.e. since they are turned away from God and are wicked, and are carried away by the impulse of Divine Omnipotence (‘rapiuntur motu illo divinæ omnipotentiæ’), they do only what is contrary to God and evil.... He works what is evil in the wicked because the instrument, which is unable to withdraw itself from the impelling force of His might, is itself evil.” If this means that the impulse on God’s part must in every case have an effect conformable to the condition of the instrument moved, then, in Adam’s case, its effect should surely have been good, inasmuch as Adam, being without original sin, was not inclined to evil by any passions. If then Adam fell we can only infer that the Almighty allowed an entirely different impulse from the ordinary one to take effect, one which led directly to the Fall. How, in that case, could God be exonerated from being the author of sin? Luther, unfortunately, was not in the habit of reconciling his conflicting thoughts. According to him there is nothing unreasonable in God’s punishing the first man so severely for no fault of his. Why? It is mere “malice on the part of the human heart” to boggle at the punishment of the innocent; it takes for granted the reward which, without any merit on their part, is the portion of the saved, and yet it dares to murmur when the matter is to its disadvantage and the reprobate too receive a reward without any desert on their part. A reward is a reward, and the same standard should be applied freely in both cases.

  It is scarcely comprehensible how, after such wanderings out of the right path and the exhibition of such mental confusion, Luther could proclaim so loudly the victory of his “servum arbitrium.” He describes his proof of the “unchanging, eternal and infallible will by which God foresees, orders and carries out all things” as a “thunderbolt” launched against the Erasmic and Popish heresy.

  Even the editor of the Weimar edition of the “De servo arbitrio” is unable to refrain from remarking in connection with one such passage: “It cannot be denied that this mechanical conception of a God, Who is constantly at work, reeks strongly of pantheism.” He also quotes the opinion of Kattenbusch: “Luther occasionally expresses his idea [of God’s constant action] very imperfectly.” “God becomes to a certain extent the slave of His own Power,” and all things “lose their resistance when in His presence.” “There is no doubt that the whole conception is strongly impregnated with pantheism.” Kattenbusch says further: “Relying on such an argument, Luther could not fail to advocate the view that everything is determined by God, even what has no bearing on morality or religion.” Finally he concludes: “We were therefore right in refusing, as we did, to admit that Luther’s proposition: ‘Omnia necessario fiunt’ ( in the Erl. ed.) applied merely to the domain of morals, as Luther himself tries to make us believe.” This subsequent explanation given by Luther is only a fresh proof of his mental confusion. Kattenbusch brings forward other evidences of the conflicting currents in Luther’s train of thought; for instance, in his conception of God and of destiny; into these we have, however, no time to enter.

  The theoretical weakness of Luther’s attack on free-will and its manifest bias in his own religious psychology caused the theologian O. Scheel to exclaim regretfully: “Luther impressed a deterministic stamp on the fundamental religious ideas which he put before the world.” Luther’s determinism was vainly repudiated as a “reformed heresy” by the later Protestants. It is true that Luther based his predestinarian sayings on his “personal experience of salvation, which he felt to have been a free gift,” but then his “religious state was not normal,” as Kattenbusch already had “rightly pointed out.” Luther’s doctrine of the distinction between the “Deus absconditus” and the “Deus revelatus” Scheel ascribes to a false conception of God, though he is inclined to look with favour on Luther’s fatalism, finding therein “nothing irreligious,” but merely Luther’s lively “trust in God”; he even speaks of the “religious power and truth inherent in this idea.”

  Under another aspect the work exhibits, better than any other, the undeniable qualities of its writer, the elasticity of his mind, his humour and imagination, and his startling readiness to turn every circumstance to advantage; at the same time, undoubtedly because it was a case of breaking a lance with Erasmus, the style is more polished than usual and the language less abusive. The editor of the Weimar edition speaks of the book as the “most brilliant of Luther’s Latin polemics, nay, perhaps the most brilliant of all his controversial works.”

  Luther would not have committed this great work to writing had not his mind been full of the subject. How far calm deliberation had any place in the matter it is as hard to determine here, as it is in so many of his other productions, where feeling seems to hold the reins. It is likewise difficult to understand how Luther, in practice, managed to compromise with the ideas he expou
nds, more especially as he was the leader of a movement on the banner of which was inscribed, not the gloomy domination of fatalism, but the amelioration of religious conditions by means of moral effort in all directions. The contradiction between lack of freedom on the one hand, and practice and the general belief in free-will on the other, was a rock which he circumnavigated daily, thanks to his self-persuasion that the strands drawn by the Divine Omnipotence around the will were of such a nature as not to be perceptible and could therefore be ignored. We believe ourselves to be free, and do not feel any constraint because we surrender ourselves willingly to be guided to the right or to the left; this, however, is merely due to the exceptional fineness of the threads which set the machine in motion.

  For an ennobling of human nature and of the Christian state such a system was certainly not adapted. A tragic fate ordained that the apostasy, of which the cause was ostensibly the deepening of religious life and feeling, should bear this bitter fruit. Freedom had been proclaimed for the examination of religious truth, and now, the “submission of every man” is categorically demanded to doctrines opposed to free-will and to the dignity of the Christian. Nevertheless, both then and later, even to the present day, this curious, assertive book, like the somewhat diffident one of Erasmus, to which it was a reply — both of them so characteristic of the mind of their authors — have drawn many to examine the spirit of that age and of its two spokesmen.

  In the work “De servo arbitrio,” Luther speaks of Laurentius Valla as one who had cherished similar views. In his “Table-Talk” he praises his opinions on free-will and the simplicity which he cultivated both in piety and learning. “Laurentius Valla,” he says, “is the best ‘Wal’ [Italian] I have ever come across in my life.” Opinions differ widely as to Valla’s views, which are expressed with enigmatical obscurity in his Dialogue “De libero arbitrio.” At a later date Erasmus took his part against Luther, rightly pointing out that Valla was seeking to explain popularly how it is that the Divine foreknowledge does not necessarily make all things happen without freedom and of necessity. Valla was a Humanist and critic, but neither a theologian nor a philosopher. In the question at issue he left the decision to faith, but laid great stress on the objections raised by reason. According to a modern historian he did not deny free-will, but merely left the problem, “which he neither could nor would solve,” to the Omnipotence of God.

  Luther’s Later Dicta on the Enslaved Will and on Predestination

  Luther always remained faithful to the position taken up in his great work “De servo arbitrio,” as to both the absence of freedom and predestination.

  In the Disputations of which we have records, he frequently reverts to his denial of free-will.

  In a Disputation of December 18, 1537, for the sake of debate the objection is advanced, that there is no purpose in making good resolutions owing to the will not being free: “Man,” says the opposer, “has no free-will, hence he can make no good resolutions, and sins of necessity whether he wishes to or not.” The professor’s reply runs: “Nego consequentiam. Man, it is true, cannot of himself alter his inclination to sin; he has this inclination and sins willingly, neither under compulsion nor unwillingly. Man’s will, not God, is the author of sin.” On another occasion, on January 29, 1536, the objector refers to the opinions of great Churchmen of olden times, that some freedom of the will exists. The reply is: “What such men say is not to be accepted as gospel-truth; they often gave proof of weakness and stood in need of additional purification by the ‘remissio peccatorum.’ You youngsters must not get into the habit of deriding them, yet we esteem Holy Scripture more highly.” — In the same year we read the following in the theses of the School: “It is godless philosophy, and censured by theology, to assert that ‘liberum arbitrium’ exists in man for the forming of a just judgment and a good intention, or that it is man’s business to choose between good and evil, life and death, etc. He who speaks thus does not know what man really is, and does not understand in the least what he is talking about.”

  Melanchthon, however, found urgent reasons in the growing immorality of the young men at the University and the sight of the evil results in the religious life of the people produced by the new doctrine of the will and good works to revise what he had said on free-will in his “Loci Theologici.” In the course of time he took up an altogether different standpoint, coming at last to acknowledge free-will and a certain co-operation with grace (“Synergismus”). Luther, nevertheless, was loath to break with him on account of this divergence in doctrine; out of esteem for so indispensable a fellow-worker, he even recommended to his hearers the new edition of the “Loci” without a word about the corrections in question.

  But Luther himself never surrendered his favourite idea in spite of his anxiety and horror at the effect his preaching produced on the people, who seized upon his theory of human helplessness and the sole action of grace as a pretext for moral indolence. In 1531 he was again to be heard stating — this time in a public sermon, a very unusual thing — that man lacks free-will. Here he connects this doctrine with the impossibility of “keeping the Commandments without the grace of the Spirit.” In Popery they indeed preached, as he himself had also done at one time, “quod homo habeat liberum arbitrium,” to keep the Commandments by means of his natural powers; but this was an error which had grown up even in the time of the Apostles. — As a matter of fact, however, the Church did not teach that fallen man could, at all times, keep all the Commandments without grace.

  When, in August, 1540, someone said to him: “People are merely getting worse through this preaching on grace,” he replied: “Still, grace must be preached because Christ has commanded it; and though it has been preached for a long time, yet at the hour of death the people know nothing about it; it is to the honour of God that grace should be preached; and, though we make the people worse, still God’s Word cannot be set aside. But we also teach the Ten Commandments faithfully, these must be insisted on frequently and in the right place.” The Antinomians had just then attacked the preaching of the Decalogue on the pretext of Luther’s own doctrine regarding man’s incapacity.

  In his “Table-Talk” Luther elsewhere declares it to be his “final opinion” that “whoever defends man’s free-will and says that it is capable of acting and co-operating in the very least degree in spiritual matters, has denied Christ.” Absolute determinism, or the entire absence of free-will everywhere, is here no longer expressed. “I admit,” he says, “that you have free-will for milking the cows, for building a house, etc., but not for anything further.” Of spiritual things, however, he says: “Man’s free-will does not work or do anything towards his conversion ... but merely suffers and is the material upon which the Holy Ghost works, as the potter fashions the pot out of the clay, doing this even in those who resist and are unruly like Paul. But after the Holy Ghost has worked on such a rebellious will, He renders it pliable so that it wills as He does.” The example of those “whose bodies are possessed by the devil, who rends them and drags them about, rides and drives them,” he continues, shows how little “man’s will can do” for his conversion. — Johann Aurifaber (1566), the old editor of the “Table-Talk,” says of Luther’s statement, referred to above, concerning his “final opinion”: “There you see, dear Christian brother, that it is a lie what some say and give out, more particularly the Synergists, viz.: that the dear Man of God modified in any way his opinion on free-will, which they term hard because it is directly opposed to their heresy. And yet they boast of being Luther’s disciples!”

  In his own mind Luther practically denied his doctrine as often as he struggled with remorse, or sought to overcome his terrors of conscience. Few men have had to exert their will with such energy (as we shall have occasion to point out later, vol. v., xxxii.) to hold their own against inward unrest. He, the advocate of the servitude of the will, in his struggles with himself and his better feelings, made his soul the battlefield of free-will, i.e. of a will vindicating its freedom.


  From his artificial position of security he ventures to stand up vigorously against others, great men even, who “abused” his doctrine. Count Albert of Mansfeld was one of those who, according to Luther’s account, said of predestination and the helplessness of the will: “The Gospel? What is predestined must come to pass. Let us then do as we please. If we are to be saved, we shall be saved,” etc. Luther, therefore, takes him to account in a letter addressed to him on December 8, 1542. He tells him that he intends to speak freely, being himself “a native of the county of Mansfeld.” “He, too, had been tormented with such thoughts or temptations” and had thus been in danger of hell. “For in the case of silly souls such devilish thoughts breed despair and cause them to distrust God’s grace; in the case of brave people, they make them contemners and enemies of God, who say: let me alone, I shall do as I please, for in any case all I do is to no purpose.” He does not forbear to scold the Count for his behaviour, for “withdrawing himself from the Word and the Sacrament,” for “growing cold and set upon Mammon.” In the end he is, however, only able to give him the following questionable consolation concerning his doctrine. “It is perfectly true that what God has determined must certainly take place,” but there is “a great distinction to be observed” between the revealed and the secret will of God. He should not “trouble himself much” about the latter; for those who do soon “come to care nothing for the Word of God or the Sacrament, give themselves up to a wild life, to Mammon, tyranny and everything evil; for, owing to such thoughts, they can have no faith, hope or charity for either God or man.” Instead of this he desires, as he had explained in his book against Erasmus, that we should simply cling to the God Who has revealed Himself; “what He has promised we must believe, and what He has commanded we must do.” A servant, for instance, does not presume to seek out “the secret thoughts” of his master before obeying him. “Has not God the same right to secret knowledge of His own beyond what He chooses to tell us?” Some say: If it is to be, then all will happen in any case according to God’s will; “of what use, then, is baptism, Holy Scripture and every other creature to us? If God wills it, He can surely do it without all that.”