Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  We must, however, revert to one point again and examine it more closely on account of its historical and psychological importance. This is Luther’s doctrine of the slavery of the will, and of God’s being the sole agent in man.

  This doctrine, already expressed in his Commentary on Romans in connection with his opinion on unconditional predestination, he was afterwards to expound with increasing vehemence. He was delighted to find his rigid views expressed in the Notes of the lectures on Romans and 1 Corinthians, which Melanchthon delivered in 1521 and 1522. These Notes he caused to be printed, and sent them to the author with a preface cast in the form of a letter.

  In this letter he assumes the whole responsibility for the publication, and assures Melanchthon that “no one has written better than you on Paul.” “I hold that the Commentaries of Jerome and Origen are the merest nonsense and rubbish compared with your exposition.... They, and Thomas too, wrote commentaries that are filled with their own conceits rather than with that which is Paul’s or Christ’s, whereas on the contrary yours teaches us how to read Scripture and to know Christ, and thus excels any mere commentary, which is more than one can say of the others hitherto in vogue.”

  Such praise for Melanchthon’s work, indirectly intended to recoil upon his own doctrine, caused Erasmus to remark of the Preface: “How full of pride it is!”

  The doctrine of the unfreedom of the will as here expressed by Melanchthon who then was still the true mouthpiece of Luther, though free from Luther’s rhetorical exaggerations, remains extremely harsh.

  It contains, for instance, the following propositions: “Everything in every creature occurs of necessity.... It must be firmly held that everything, both good and bad, is done by God.” “God does not merely allow His creatures to act, but it is He Himself Who acts.” As He does what is good, so also He does what is indifferent in man, such as eating and drinking and the other animal functions, and also what is evil, “such as David’s adultery and Manlius’s execution of his son.” The treason of Judas was not merely permitted of God, but, as Augustine says, was the effect of His power. “It is a huge blasphemy to deny predestination, the actuality of which we have briefly proved above.”

  Ten years later Melanchthon had grown shy of views so monstrous; he thought it advisable to repudiate this book, and, in 1532, he dedicated a new Commentary on Romans to the Archbishop of Mayence, whom he was anxious to win over. In the preface he says, that he no longer acknowledged (“plane non agnosco”) the earlier work which had appeared under his name. Later, after Luther’s death, he went so far as to demand the severe punishment of those who denied free-will and questioned the need of good works for salvation.

  Luther, on the other hand, as we know, never relinquished his standpoint on the doctrine of free-will. Beside his statements already quoted may be put the following: The will is not only unfree “in everything,” but is so greatly depraved by original sin, that, not content with being entirely passive in the matter of Justification, it actually resists God like the devil. “What I say is, that the spiritual powers are not merely depraved, but altogether annihilated by sin, not less in man than in the devils.... Their reason and their will seek those things alone which are opposed to God. Whatever is in our will is evil and whatever is in our reason is mere error and blindness. Thus, in things Divine, man is nothing but darkness, error and depravity, his will is evil and his understanding nowhere.”

  From such a standpoint all that was possible was a mere outward imputation of the merits of Christ, no Justification in the sense in which it was taken by the ancient Church, viz. as a supernatural regeneration by means of sanctifying grace.

  Any reliable proofs, theological or biblical, in support of this altogether novel view of Justification will be sought for in vain in the works of Melanchthon and Luther. When Luther speaks of the power of faith in the merits of Christ and of the promises of faith concerning eternal life, as he does, for instance, in the written defence which he handed to Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, his words and the Bible passages he quotes merely express what the Church had always taught concerning the necessity and efficacy of faith as the condition of the supernatural life to be further developed in the soul by God’s Grace and man’s co-operation. In spite of this, in that very writing he alleges that he has satisfactorily proved that Justification is effected by fiducial faith.

  “No one can be justified,” he there writes, “but by faith, in the sense that he must needs believe with a firm faith (‘certa fide credere’) that he is justified, and not doubt in any way that he is to attain to grace; for if he doubts and is uncertain, he will not be justified, rather he spits out the grace.”

  His doctrine of faith alone and of the imputed merits of Christ, was, of all his theological opinions, the one which underwent the least change during his lifetime. Until old age he continued to lay great stress on it both in the University Disputations and in his sermons and writings. Even the inferences drawn from it by Johann Agricola in his Antinomian theses did not cause Luther to waver in the least.

  In the Schmalkalden Articles he declares explicitly that Justification consists merely in God’s “looking upon” the sinner “as righteous and holy.” According to one of his sermons our righteousness comes “altogether from without and rests solely on Christ and His work”; elsewhere he says, with the utmost assurance: The Christian is “righteous and holy by virtue of a foreign or outward holiness.”

  In view of such statements undue stress must not be laid on that Luther says in another passage, which recalls the teaching of the olden Church, viz. that the Spirit of God dwells in the righteous, and fills him with His gifts, nay, with His very “substance,” and that it was this Spirit which gave him the “feeling and the certainty” of being in a state of grace. This is much the same as when Luther describes man’s active love of God whereby he becomes united and “one kitchen” with God, whilst, nevertheless, insisting that the strength of the sola fides must never be the least diminished by work. “No work must be added to this” (to faith), he says in his postils, “for whoever preaches that guilt and penalty can be atoned for by works has already denied the Evangel.” Only at times does he allow himself to follow the voice of nature speaking on behalf of man’s co-operation; this he does, for instance, in the passage just referred to, where he admits that human reason is ever inviting man to take a share in working out his salvation by means of his own works.

  The forgiveness which God offers “must be seized and believed. If you believe it you are rid of sin and all is right.” “This all the Gospels teach.” Unfortunately there are “many abandoned people who misuse the Gospel ... who think that no one must punish them because the Gospel preaches nothing but forgiveness of sins. To such the Gospel is not preached.... To whom is it preached? To those who feel their misery,” i.e. to those who are sunk in remorse of conscience and in fears, similar to, or at least faintly resembling, those he had himself once endured. When he applies the words of Psalm 50 to the yearning, the prayers and the struggles of those who thirst for salvation: “A contrite and humbled heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise,” he finds himself again, all unconsciously, on the road to the Church’s olden view on man’s share in repentance.

  What we read in the important notes “De iustificatione,” written during Luther’s stay in the fortress of Coburg and only recently published, differs not at all from his ordinary, purely mechanical view of Justification. These notes are from Luther’s amanuensis, Veit Dietrich, and record some conversations concerning a work Luther had planned in reply to the objections against the new doctrine of Justification. Dietrich entitled the collection “Rhapsodia.”

  It is not surprising that at a later date Luther hesitated to appeal to St. Augustine in support of his doctrine so confidently as he once had done. Augustine and all the Doctors of the Church are decidedly against him. On the publication of the complete edition of his works in Latin Luther expressed himself in the preface very diplomatically concerning Augustine:
“In the matter of imputation he does not explain everything clearly.” Naturally the greatest teacher on grace, who lays such stress on its supernatural character and its gifts in the soul of the righteous, could not fail to disagree with him, seeing that Luther’s system culminates in the assurance, that grace is the merest imputation in which man has no active share, a mere favour on God’s part, “favor Dei.”

  Augustine’s views of the powers and the end of man in the natural as well as the supernatural order have been clearly set forth in their connection with the trend of present-day scholarship by an eminent Catholic researcher. The latter points out that a strong revulsion against Luther’s idea of outward imputation has shown itself in Protestantism, and that the “historical theology” of our day largely acknowledges the existence of the Catholic doctrine “in the olden ecclesiastical and, indeed, even in the New-Testament world.” The same holds good of Augustine as of Paul. “Not the ‘sola fides,’ but the renewal of the interior man, a ‘true and real new creation,’ was the essence of Paul’s doctrine of justification.”

  The Striving after Absolute Certainty of Salvation.

  Luther was chiefly concerned in emphasising the indispensable necessity of particular faith in personal justification and personal salvation.

  Whereas the Church had required faith in our real, objective redemption by Christ, Luther demanded over and above a further faith in one’s subjective redemption, in spite of the difficulty which circumstances might present to the attaining of this assurance. It was something very different when the olden theologians taught that there were signs from which the good man’s state of grace might be inferred with moral certainty, and that such signs were, for instance, the determination to commit no grievous sin, the desire to perform good works more especially such as were difficult, joy and peace of soul in God, and, above all, the consciousness of having done everything that was necessary for reconciliation with God. That, by such marks, it was “possible to arrive at the practical certainty of being in a state of grace” had been taught by Gabriel Biel, with whom Luther was acquainted. Later on, the Council of Trent laid down as the Catholic doctrine, against the Lutheran theory of absolute faith in personal justification, “that no good Christian may doubt of the mercy of God, of the merits of Christ or the efficacy of grace,” but that at the same time “no one can know with the certainty of faith which precludes all possibility of error that he has attained to God’s grace.”

  Luther’s teaching was quite different.

  He writes, for instance, in the larger Commentary on Galatians, which, as we know, he regarded next to his work “De servo arbitrio” as his principal legacy to posterity: “We must perceive and recognise it as certain that we are the temple of the Holy Ghost.” “The heart must be quite certain that it is in a state of grace and that it has the Holy Ghost.” It is true, he says, that, “because we feel the opposite sentiments of fear, doubt, sadness, etc., we fail to regard this as certain.” Yet do this we must: “We must day by day struggle (‘luctari’) towards greater and greater certainty.” We should exercise ourselves in the feeling of certainty, risk something to secure it; for it rests with our own self-acquired ability to believe ever firmly and steadfastly, even as we believe the truths of faith, that we are really justified. All depends on the practice and experience just referred to. “This matter, if it is to be achieved, cannot be learnt without experience. Everyone should therefore accustom himself resolutely to the persuasion that he is in a state of grace and that his person and deeds are pleasing [to God]. Should he feel a doubt, then let him exercise faith; he must beat down his doubts and acquire certainty, so as to be able to say: I know that I am pleasing [to God] and have the Holy Ghost, not on account of any worth or merits of my own, but on account of Christ, Who for our sakes submitted Himself to the law and took away the sins of the world. In Him I believe.” “The greatest art consists in this, that, regardless of the fact that we commit sin, we can yet say to the law: I am sinless.”

  “And even when we have fought very hard for this, it will still cost us much sweat.”

  It is thus that Luther was led to speak from his own inner experience, of which we have plentiful corroboration. In the passage last quoted, he proceeds: “The matter of justification is difficult and delicate (‘causa iustificationis lubrica est’), not indeed in itself, for in itself it is as certain as can be, but in our regard; of this I have frequent experience.”

  We are already acquainted to some extent with the struggle against himself, and the better voices within him, which the unhappy man had to wage; this distress of soul remains to be treated of more in detail later (vol. v., xxxii.). It may, however, be pointed out here that he knew how to make this struggle part of his system; even when depressed by one’s painful inability to reach this unshaken consciousness of salvation he still insists that one must feel certain; faced by doubts and fears on account of his sins, man must summon defiance to his aid, then, finally, he will come to rest secure of his personal salvation.

  “We must cling with all sureness to the belief that not merely our office but also our person is well-pleasing to God.” It is true that men see, “how weak is the faith even of the pious. We would assuredly joyfully give thanks to God for His unspeakable gift could we but say with entire certainty: Yes, indeed, I am in a state of grace, my sin is forgiven me, I have the Spirit of Christ and I am the son of God. We feel, however, in ourselves emotions quite contrary, viz. fear, doubt, sadness, etc., hence we do not venture to make the assertion.” Others might infer from this the uselessness of all such vain efforts. Luther, however, would not be the man he is were he not to declare: On the contrary, “we must daily struggle more and more from uncertainty to certainty!” “Christ Himself,” so he argues, “is quite certain in His Spirit that He is pleasing to God.... Hence we too, seeing that we have the Spirit of Christ, must be certain that we too stand in grace ... on account of Him Who is certain.”

  The last argument is the more noteworthy in that it demonstrates so well the vicious circle involved in Luther’s conclusion.

  It amounts to this: In order to possess grace and reconciliation you must believe that you have grace and reconciliation. What guarantee has one of the certainty of this belief? Nothing but the inward consciousness to be evolved in the soul that it has indeed the grace of Christ which covers over all that is evil in it.

  As Luther says, “If you are to be saved you must be so sure within yourself of the Word of grace, that even were all men to say the contrary, yea all the angels to deny it, you could yet stand alone and say: I know this Word is true.”

  In practice, nevertheless, Luther was content with very little in the matter of this strength of certitude: “If I have Him [Christ], I am sure that I have everything.... What is still wanting in me is, that I cannot yet grasp it or believe it perfectly. So far as I am able now to grasp it and believe it, so far do I possess it, and if I stick to it this will go on increasing.” But “still there remains an outward feeling of death, of hell, of the devil, of sin and of the law. Even though you feel this, it is merely a warfare that seeks to hinder you from attaining to life everlasting.... We should say: I believe in Christ Jesus, He is mine, and so far as I have Him and believe in Him, thus far am I pious.”— “Yet believe it I cannot.”

  Luther, according to the legend which he evolved later when defending his doctrine of faith alone and Justification, had started from the intense inward need he felt of certainty of salvation, and with the object, as he says, of “finding a Gracious God.” By his discovery regarding Justification, so his admirers say, he at last found and retained for the rest of his life the sense of a merciful God. The strange thing is, however, that in his severe and protracted struggles of conscience he should, at a later date, have again arrived at this very question: “How can I find a Gracious God?”

  He writes in 1527 to Melanchthon: “Like a wretched, reprobate worm I am molested by the spirit of sadness.... I desire nothing and thirst after noth
ing but a Gracious God.” So greatly was he involved in inward contests that he says: “I am scarce able to drag on my existence; of working or writing I dare not think.” “Satan is busy,” he exclaims to his friend Wenceslaus Link during these storms, “and would fain make it impossible for me to write; he wants to drag me down to him in hell. May God tread him under foot. Amen!”

  With very many of his followers the assurance of salvation failed to hold good in the presence of death. “We not only do not feel it [this assurance],” so he makes them say, “but rather the contrary.” He admits the phenomenon and seeks to account for it; nay, in his usual way, he makes capital out of it. “In God’s sight,” he says, “the matter is indeed so [i.e. as promised by his doctrine of Justification], but not yet in our eyes and in those of the world; hence our fears still persist until we are released by death.” “Whoever feels weak let him console himself with this, that no one succeeds perfectly in this [in the attainment of certainty].” “That is one of the advantages enjoyed by heretics,” he cries, “to lull themselves in security.... Nothing is more pestilential than security. Hence, when you feel weak in the faith you must rouse yourself; it is a sign of a good disposition and of the fear of God.” — Readers of Luther must be prepared for surprising statements.