Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  In the same work Kropatscheck rightly sums up the teaching on the inspiration of the canonical books, of St. Thomas Aquinas, the principal exponent of the mediæval biblical teaching, doing so in a couple of sentences the clearness and conclusiveness of which contrast strangely with the new doctrine: “The effect of inspiration,” according to this Doctor of the Church, implies, negatively, preservation from error, positively, an enlightenment, both for the perception of supernatural truth and for the right judging of natural verities. Beyond this, a certain impulse from on high was needed to move the sacred scribes to write the burden of their message.

  That in the past the doctrine of interpretation was bound up with the doctrine of inspiration, is, according to the statements of another Protestant writer, P. Drews, expressed as follows by the Catholic voice of Willibald Pirkheimer: “We should have to look on ourselves as reprobate were we to despise even one syllable of Holy Scripture, for we know and firmly believe that our salvation rests solely and entirely on the Gospel. Hence we have it daily in our hands and read it and regard it as the guide of our lives. But no one can blame us if we place greater reliance on the interpretation of the holy, ancient Fathers than on some garbled account of Holy Scripture, since it is, alas, daily evident that there are as many different readings of the Word of God as there are men. Herein lies the source of all the evils and disorders, viz. that every fool would expound Scripture, needless to say, to his own advantage.”

  Protestant theologians have recently been diligent in studying Luther’s teaching on the Bible. The conclusions arrived at by O. Scheel, who severely criticises Luther, have several times been quoted in this work. K. Thimme, in a scholarly work entitled “Luthers Stellung zur Heiligen Schrift,” has pointed out that Luther, who “affirms the existence of real inaccuracies in Holy Scripture,” nevertheless, in the very year that he expressed contempt for certain books of the New Testament, loudly demanded “the firmest belief (‘firmissime credatur’), that nothing erroneous is contained in the canonical books.”

  A. Galley, a theologian to whom it fell to review the book, declared, that, unfortunately, in spite of this and other essays on the subject, no sure and decisive judgment on Luther’s attitude towards Holy Scripture had yet been arrived at. — Does this not, perhaps, amount to saying that any ultimate verdict of harmony, truth and absence of contradictions is out of the question?

  R. Seeberg in one work emphasises “Luther’s independent and critical attitude towards the books of the Old and New Testament Canon.” “Scripture is to be believed not on the external authority of the Church but because it is revelation tested by experience.... Scripture was to him the standard, test and measure of all ecclesiastical doctrine, but this it was as the expression of the experienced revelation of God.”

  This statement Seeberg further explains elsewhere: “Though, in his controversies, Luther pits Scripture as the ‘Divine law’ against all mere ecclesiastical law [viz. the Church’s dogma], yet he regarded it as authoritative simply in so far as it was the original, vigorous witness to Christ and His salvation. Considered in this light, Scripture, however, cannot be put side by side with justifying faith as the second principle of Protestantism. The essential and fundamental thought is faith.” — What Seeberg here says is quietly aimed at the later, orthodox, Lutheran theologians who took from Luther the so-called formal principle of Protestantism, viz. the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the Bible. “How is it possible, in view of Luther’s reprobation of certain things in the Bible ... and his admission that it contained mistakes, to imagine any verbal inspiration?”

  Seeberg has also a remarkable account of Luther’s views on the relation to Scripture of that faith which in reality is based on inward experience: “The specific content of Scripture” is “Christ, His office and kingdom.” To this content it is that faith bears witness by inward experience (see above, f.). For faith is “the recognition by the heart of the Almighty love revealed to us in God.... This recognition involves also the certainty that I am in the Grace of God.” “The truth of Scripture is something demonstrated inwardly,” etc. “The external, legal founding of doctrine upon dogma is thus set aside, and an end is made of the ancient canon of Vincent of Lerins. Even the legal [dogmatic] application of Scripture is in principle done away with.” Of the extent to which Luther carried out these principles the author says in conclusion: “That his practice was not always exemplary and devoid of contradiction can merely be hinted at here.”

  It would have been better to say straight away that no non-contradictory use of contradictory principles was possible.

  Dealing with a work by K. Eger (“Luthers Auslegung des Alten Testamentes”), W. Köhler said: “Any interpretation not limited by practical considerations ... was quite unknown to Luther, hence we must not seek such a thing in him.... Our best plan is to break with Luther’s principle of interpretation.” And, before this: “Luther’s principle of interpretation is everywhere the ‘fides,’ and what Luther has to offer in the way of sober, ‘historical’ interpretation is no growth of his own garden but a fruit of Humanism.... Just as the Schoolmen found their theology in the Old Testament, so he did his.”

  Luther’s method of interpretation, however, presents much that calls for closer examination.

  2. Luther as a Bible-Expositor

  “Luther in his quality of Bible-expositor is one of the most extraordinary and puzzling figures in the domain of religious psychology.”

  Some Characteristics of Luther’s Exegesis.

  It is true that some of Luther’s principles of exegesis are excellent, and that he has a better perception than many of his predecessors of the need of first ascertaining the literal sense, and, for this purpose, of studying languages. He is aware that the fourfold sense of Holy Scripture, so often wrongly appealed to, must retire before the literal meaning, and that we must ever seek what the sacred writer really and obviously meant, in whatever dress we find his ideas clothed. Some quite excellent observations occur in his works on the danger of having recourse to allegorical interpretations and of not taking the text literally.

  Luther himself, it is true, in his earlier postils, frequently makes use of the allegory so dear to mediæval writers, often investing what he says in poetic and fantastic forms. Later on, however, he grew more cautious. Here again the abuse of allegory by the fanatics had its effect. In addition to this his constant efforts to prove his doctrine against theological gainsayers within and without his camp, forced him in his arguments to use the literal sense of the Bible, or at least what he considered such. The advantages of his German translation of the Bible will be spoken of elsewhere (see vol. v., xxxiv., 3).

  Yet he lacked one thing essentially required of an expositor, viz. theological impartiality, nor was he fair to those means by which the Church’s interpreters were guided in determining the sense of Scripture.

  Concerning the latter, it is enough to remember how lightheartedly he threw overboard the interpretation of the whole of the Christian past. His wantonness, which led him to esteem as of no account all the expositions and teachings of previous ages, deprived his exegesis of much help and also of any stable foundation. Even considered from the merely natural standpoint, real progress in religious knowledge must surely be made quietly and without any sudden break with what has already been won by the best minds by dint of diligent labour.

  The rock on which Luther suffered shipwreck was however above all his complete lack of impartiality. In his work as expositor his concern was not to do homage to the truth in whatever shape he might encounter it in the texts he was interpreting, but to introduce into the texts his own ideas. Bearing in mind his controversy and his natural temperament, this cannot, however, surprise us. Hence it is not necessary to take too tragically the tricks he occasionally plays with Bible texts. Some of these have been most painstakingly examined, and, indeed, it was not without its advantages to have the general complaints raised thus verified in individual instances. Thanks
to his investigations Döllinger was able to write: “False interpretations of the most obvious and arbitrary kind are quite the usual thing in his polemics. It would hardly be possible to carry this further than he did in his writings against Erasmus in the instances quoted even by Planck. Indeed, examples of utter wilfulness and violence to the text can be adduced in great number from his writings.” Most frequently, as Döllinger points out, “his interpretation is false, because he foists his own peculiar ideas on the biblical passages, ideas which on his own admission he reached not by a calm and dispassionate study of the Bible, but under conditions of painful mental disturbance and anxiety of conscience.” To this he was urged by the unrest certain Bible-sayings excited in him; in such cases, as Döllinger remarks, he knew how “to pacify his exegetical conscience by telling himself, that all this disquiet was merely a temptation of the devil, who wanted to puzzle him with passages from Scripture and thus drive him to despair.”

  The whole of his exegesis is pervaded by his doctrine of Justification. In this sense he says in the preface to Galatians, the largest of his exegetico-dogmatic works: “Within me this one article of faith in Christ reigns supreme. Day and night all my ideas on theology spring from it and return thereto.”

  “The article of Justification,” he declares, in a disputation in 1537, “is the master and prince, the lord, regent and judge of every form of doctrine, which preserves and rules all ecclesiastical knowledge and exalts our consciousness before God.”

  Two years before this (1535) he expressed himself still more strongly in a disputation: “Scripture is not to be understood against, but for, Christ. Hence it must either be made to apply to Him — or not be regarded as true Scripture at all.”

  His highly vaunted idea of Justification he sought to apply first and foremost to those books or passages of the Bible which, as he expressed it, “preach Christ.” Though giving the first place in the canonical regard to those writings where Christ is most strongly and fully preached and but scant favour (when he does not reject them entirely) to those where this is not the case, he yet contrives to introduce his own particular Christ into many parts of Scripture which really say nothing about Him. Everything that redounds to the honour of Christ, i.e. to the exaltation of His work of grace in man, as Luther understood it, must be forced into Scripture, while everything that tends to assert man’s powers and the need of his co-operation must be expunged, since Christ cannot arrive at His right which He has from the Father except through the utter helplessness of man. The Bible must nowhere know of any inner righteousness on man’s part that is of any value in God’s sight; it must never place on the lips of Christ any demand, any praise or reward for human effort. All sacred utterances which contradict this are, so he says, in spite of his preference for the literal sense, not to be taken literally. Thus, when the Bible says man shall, it does not follow that he can; God rather wishes thereby to convince man of his helplessness; nay, what is said in this connection of man and his works really applies to Christ, Who has done everything for us and makes it all ours by faith.

  “There were times in his life when the antithesis between faith and works so dominated him and filled his mind, that the whole Bible seemed to him to have been written simply to illustrate and emphasise this doctrine of Justification.”

  Two portions of Holy Scripture, viz. the Epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians, according to him, hold the first place in their eulogy of Christ, by their recommendation of faith in Him alone. Hence “all questions and all the more obscure passages of Scripture are to be solved and explained by these two epistles.” If, in the Bible, good works are extolled or almsgiving praised, the word “fide” must always be understood, since the meaning cannot but be that such works are profitable by faith.

  In the case of the Evangelists, Matthew and Luke in particular, we must expound their writings in accordance with the doctrine of Justification through Christ and man’s own helplessness. “Scripture must be interpreted according to this article.... When Matthew and Luke speak of good works, they are to be understood and judged according to this rule.”

  Thus, in all questions of exegesis the “preaching of Christ” is conclusive. We must, first of all, see whether each book commonly reckoned to form part of the Bible really “preaches Christ,” and, where this is so, the same thoughts will control everything else.

  In the question of the relation of faith to the interpretation of Scripture, Luther hobbles strangely. On the one hand the Bible is to be interpreted strictly according to faith, on the other, faith is to be won solely from the Bible. The former proposition he thus explains in a sermon: It is a command that the interpretation of Scripture must “rhyme with faith and not teach anything contrary to or differing from what faith teaches.” True faith, however, is that which is directed against the power of works, so that any interpretation of the Bible which contradicts this is wrong. Whatever teaches us “to have a good conscience towards God, except by faith alone and without any works, neither resembles nor rhymes with faith.” Of the content of faith we are assured above all by inward experience and the Spirit. It is indeed on the “feeling and sentiment” that, in the case of faith, i.e. the acceptance of the Gospel message of salvation, Luther lays the chief stress. “If you feel it not, you have not the faith, the Word merely rings in your ears and hovers on your lips like foam on water.”

  Luther is just as determined in proving faith from Scripture as he is in making Scripture subservient to and dependent on faith. “Without Scripture faith soon goes,” he exclaims after labouring to bring forward arguments from the Bible in support of the new faith in Christ. “Whatever is advanced without being attested by Scripture or a revelation need not be believed.” “To this wine no water must be added”; to this sun no lantern must be held up! “You must take your stand on a plain, clear and strong word of Scripture, which will then be your support.”

  The worst of it is, as O. Scheel aptly remarks, that Luther pits his Christ against Scripture and thus makes the latter void.

  On the one hand, according to Adolf Harnack, Luther, when making faith the rule of Bible interpretation, becomes a “mediæval exegete” and borrows from the past even his types and allegories. Yet he cuts himself adrift in the most decided fashion from the mediæval exegesis, “not merely when it is a question of Justification,” but even “in regard to such Scripture passages as contain nothing whatever about the doctrine of Justification and faith, or only alien matter.”

  For instance, he finds righteousness by works condemned and faith exalted in the very first pages of the Bible; for Cain, his brother’s murderer, “clung to works and lost the faith,” that was his misfortune; whereas Abel held aloof “from free-will and the merit of works” and “kept the faith in a pure conscience.” “The same thing happened later with Isaac and Ismael, Jacob and Esau, and others.” — Yet, in spite of such condemnation of works, many passages, particularly in the New Testament, seem to tell in favour of works. This, however, is only due to the fact that at the time of the New Testament writers it was desirable to raise up a bulwark against any too great esteem for faith. Thus it was really not meant quite seriously; in the same way even he himself, so he says, had been obliged to oppose this excessive esteem for faith, because, in his day, and owing to his preaching, the people “wanted merely to believe, to the neglect of the power and fruit of faith” (in good actions).

  Owing to his habit of ever reading the Bible through the glass of his doctrine of Justification, his handling of Rom. xi. 32 (in the Vulgate: “Conclusit Deus omnia in incredulitate ut omnium misereatur”) was such that Döllinger found in it no less than “three falsifications of the words of Paul.”

  Luther’s marginal glosses to his translation of the Bible are open to plentiful objections, for their purpose is to recall the reader as often as possible to the basic theories of his doctrine.

  Some Protestants have been exceedingly frank in characterising the strained relations often noticeable between
Luther’s exegesis and true scholarship.

  Friedrich Paulsen, in his “Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts,” when dealing with the demand made by the “exegesis of the Reformation,” viz. that the reader must cling to the plain text and letter of Scripture, says: “Luther by no means considered himself bound to the letter and the grammatical sense of the text of Scripture. Where the letter was in his favour, he indeed used it against others, the Swiss, for instance, but, where it was not, he nevertheless stands by his guns and knows what Scripture ought to have said. Everybody knows with what scant regard he handled certain books of Scripture, estimating their value according as they agreed more or less with his teaching, and even amending them a little when they failed to reach his standard or to present the pure doctrine of justification by faith ‘alone’ in a light sufficiently strong.... In order to understand Scripture it is necessary [according to Luther] to know beforehand what it teaches; Scripture is indeed the rule of doctrine, but, vice versa, doctrine is also the rule of Scripture which must be interpreted ‘ex analogia fidei.’”