Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  The Regula Fidei.

  Such a denial of the consequences of the principles of his doctrine lies first and foremost in the fact that Luther summed up in a Rule of Faith the various dogmas to which it was his intention to remain true. The “regula fidei,” such as he wished to bequeath to posterity, he saw expressed in the Confession of Augsburg, and in the oldest Œcumenical Creeds of the Church.

  It has already been seen that the radicalism involved in his religious attitude should by rights have issued in a freedom, nay, licence, which would have rendered impossible any binding formularies of faith.

  It is also the opinion of most modern Protestant theologians that the definition of doctrine which began with the Confession of Augsburg, or in fact with the Articles of Marburg, really constituted an unjustifiable encroachment on the freedom of religious thought inaugurated by Luther. Luther indeed invested these doctrinal formularies with all the weight of his authority, yet, according to these theologians, they represented a “narrowing” of the Evangelical ideas advocated by him; nor can it be gainsaid that the revolutionary ideas for which Luther stood from about 1520 to 1523 justify such strictures.

  “This promising spring,” writes Adolf Harnack, a representative of theological freedom, “was followed by no real summer. In those years Luther was lifted above himself and seemed to have overcome the limitations of his peculiar temperament.”... But Luther unfortunately reverted to his limitations. Nor were they “merely a light vesture, or as some would fain have us believe, due simply to lack of comprehension on the part of Melanchthon and other henchmen, for Luther himself saw in them the very foundation of his strength and made the fullest use of them as such.”

  In other words, his contradiction with his own original principles became to him, so to speak, a second nature. He was in deadly earnest with the dogmas which he retained, and which were comprised in the official Articles of faith. In so far, therefore, he may be said to have turned away from the consequences of his own action and to have striven to slam the door which he had opened to unbelief and private judgment.

  Of the Confession of Augsburg, the most important of these declarations of faith, Harnack says: “That the Gospel of the Reformation found masterly expression in the ‘Augustana,’ that I cannot admit. The ‘Augustana’ founded a teaching Church; on it must be laid the blame for the narrowing of the movement of reform. Could such a thing have been written previous to 1526, or even previous to 1529?”

  After admitting elsewhere the advantages of the Confession of Augsburg, Harnack proceeds: “It is possible by retracing our steps to arrive through it at the broader Evangelical ideas without which there would never have been a Reformation or an ‘Augustana.’ With regard to their author, however, it is no use blinking the fact, that here Melanchthon undertook, or rather was forced to undertake, a task to which his gifts and his character were not equal.” “In the theology of Melanchthon the moralist, who stands at the side of Luther the Evangelist, we discern attempts to amend Luther’s theology.... Melanchthon, however, felt himself cramped by having to act as the guardian of Lutheranism. We cannot take it ill if Lutherans prefer to err with Luther their hero, rather than submit to be put in Melanchthon’s leading-strings.”

  Harnack and those who think like him are even more antagonistic to the later creeds of Lutheranism than to the Confession composed by Melanchthon. “The ‘symbolic age’ when the ‘Lutheran Church’ gave ‘definite expression’ to her will is nothing more than a fable convenue. ‘This Lutheran Church as an actual body,’ says Carl Müller, ‘never really existed and the spokesmen of the strictest Luther faction were just the worst enemies of such a union.... Thus to speak of creeds of the Lutheran Church involves an historic impossibility.’” According to these theologians Protestantism must hark back to Luther’s original principles of freedom. Moreover, argues Harnack, Protestantism has on the whole already reverted to this earlier standpoint. “We are not forsaking the clear testimony of history when we find in Luther’s Christianity and in the first beginnings of the Reformation all that present-day Protestantism has developed, though amidst weakness and constraint; nor when we state that Luther’s idea of faith is still to-day the moving spirit of Protestantism, however many or however few may have made it their own.” Luther’s “most effective propositions,” according to him, may well be allowed to stand as the “heirloom of the Evangelical Churches”; it is plain that they do not lead to a mere “dogmatic Christianity,” but to true Christianity consisting in the “disposition which the Father of Jesus Christ awakens in the heart through the Gospel.” Luther himself has only to be rightly appreciated and “allowed to remain Luther.”

  Harnack repeatedly insists that Luther by setting aside all authority on dogma, whether of the Church, the hierarchy or tradition, also destroyed the binding character of any “doctrine.” By his attack on all authority he dealt a mortal blow at the vital principle of the ancient Church, traceable back to the second century. According to him “every doctrinal formulary of the past required objective proof”; this objective proof was to him the sole authority. “How then could there be authority when the objective proof failed or seemed to demonstrate the contrary?” To judge of the proof is within the province of each individual, and, according as he is constituted, the result will be different. “Luther — even at the most critical moment, when he seemed to stand in the greatest need of the formal authority of the letter — did not allow himself to be overawed or his mouth to be closed even by the Apostles’ Creed.” He indeed “involved himself later in limitations and restrictions,” “but there can be no doubt ... that by his previous historic behaviour towards them he had undermined all the formal authorities of Catholicism.”

  On this fundamental question of the possibility of a “regula fidei” in Luther’s case, we may listen to the opinion of another esteemed Protestant historian of late years.

  Friedrich Paulsen, in his much-prized “Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts,” writes: “The Word of God does not suffice as a ‘regula fidei,’ but a personal authority is also needed to decide on questions of doctrine, this is what the Luther of 1535 says and thereby confutes the Luther of 1521, who refused to allow anyone on earth to point out to him the faith unless he himself could gather its truth from the Word of God. Had Luther abided by his rejection of all human authority he should have declared: On the interpretation of Scripture there is no final court of appeal, each one believes or errs at his own peril.... What Luther had relied on in 1521 against the Papists, viz. inability to refute him from Scripture, was used against him in his own struggle with the ‘fanatics.’... For the confuting of heretics a rule of faith is needed, and what is more, a living one to decide in each case. The principle of 1521, to allow no authority on earth to prescribe the faith, is anarchical. On these lines there can be no ‘Church’ with an ‘examen doctrinæ’ of its candidates and Visitations of the clergy. This the Reformers also saw and thus there was nothing left for them, if they were to retain a ‘Church,’ than to set up their own authority in the stead of the authority of Pope and Councils. On one vexatious point they were, however, at a loss: Against the later Luther it was always possible to appeal to the Luther of Worms. The starting-point and raison d’être of the whole Reformation was the repudiation on principle of all human authority in matters of faith; after this, to find Luther installed as Pope, was scarcely pleasing. If anyone stands in need of a Pope he would surely be better advised in sticking to the real one at Rome.... The hole in Luther’s teaching still remains a hole in the principle of the Protestant Church to-day: There can be no earthly authority in matters of faith, and: Such an authority there must be, this is an antinomy which lies at its very root. Nor is the antinomy accidental, but lies in the very nature of the matter and is expressed as often as we speak of the ‘Protestant Church.’ If there is to be a Church ... then the individual must submit himself and his ‘faith’ to the ‘faith’ of the community.” Paulsen, who had spoken of “Luther as Pope,�
� refers to Luther’s own remark when taking his seat with Bugenhagen in the carriage in which he went to meet Vergerio the Papal Nuncio: “Here go the German Pope and Cardinal Pomeranus, God’s chosen instruments”; Luther’s remark was of course spoken in jest, but the jest “was only possible against a background of bitter earnest”; Luther frequently dallied with this idea; “for the position Luther occupied, ages even after his death, there really was no other comparison to be found.... With the above jest Luther reduced himself ad absurdum.” — Such censures are in reality more in place than those eulogies of Luther’s exclamation at Worms in 1521 on the freedom of Bible conviction, into which orthodox Protestant biographers of Luther sometimes lapse.

  Some Peculiarities of the New Doctrine on the Sacraments, Particularly on Baptism.

  The theological pillars of the edifice of public worship are the seven sacraments, the visible signs ordained by Christ by which grace is given to our souls. Held in honour even by the Nestorians and Monophysites as witnesses to ecclesiastical antiquity, they enfold and hallow all the chief events of human life. Luther debased the effect of the sacraments by making it something wholly subjective, produced by the recipients themselves in virtue of the faith infused into them by God, whereas the Church has ever recognised the sacraments as sublime and mysterious signs, which of themselves work in the receiver (“ex opere operato”) according to the extent of his preparation, Christ having made the grace promised dependent on the outward signs instituted by Himself. Luther, on the other hand, by declaring the sacraments mere symbols whereby faith is strengthened, operative only by virtue of the recipient’s faith in the pardon and forgiveness of his sins, reduced them to the status of empty pledges for soothing and consoling consciences. Only later did he again come nearer to the Catholic doctrine of the “opus operatum.” With his view, however, that the sole object of the sacraments is to increase the “fides specialis,” we arrive again at the point which for Luther is the sum total of religion, viz.: “mere forgiveness.”

  He was not at all conscious of the contradiction involved in his vigorous insistence on the absolute necessity of the sacraments for salvation. From his standpoint Carlstadt was far more logical when he said: “If Christ [alone] is peace and assurance [of salvation], then lifeless creatures [the sacramental, outward signs] can surely not satisfy or make secure.”

  Luther raised no objection to infant baptism. He also wished it, and baptism in general, to be given in the usual way in the name of the Trinity. But how did he try to solve the difficulty arising from his theory of the sacraments: If the sacrament only works in virtue of the faith of the receiver and the effect is merely an increase of faith, of what advantage can it be to the infant who is incapable of belief? He endeavoured to remedy the defect with the help of the faith of the congregation.

  Meeting difficulties on this line he did not shrink from claiming a perpetually recurring miracle, and proposed to assume that, during the act of baptism, the new-born infant was momentarily endowed by God with the use of reason and filled with faith.

  In his “De captivitate babylonica” he had already attempted to cut the Gordian knot presented by infant baptism by this assumption, which, however arbitrary, is quite intelligible from his psychological standpoint. Thanks to the believing prayer of the congregation who present the children for baptism, so he said, faith is infused into them and they thus become regenerate. In 1523 he states that children have a hidden faith. “From that time onwards the tendency of his teaching was to require faith from candidates for baptism.... Even after the Concord he continued to speak exactly as before.” The Bible teaches nothing about infant baptism. Yet Luther declares in 1545 in a set of theses: “It is false and outrageous to say that little children do not believe, or are unworthy,” while at the head of the theses these words stand: “Everything that in the Church, which is God’s people, is taught without the Word of God, is assuredly false and unchristian.”

  It is of interest to follow up his arguments for the faith of infants. In 1522 already he had attempted in a letter to prove to Melanchthon the possibility of such unconscious faith. He referred him to the circumstance, which, however, is irrelevant, “that we retain the faith while asleep or otherwise engaged.” Moreover, since to him who believes, everything is possible with God, so, too, to the congregation which prays for the children; the children are presented by the congregation to the Lord of all, and He, by His Omnipotence, kindles faith in them. In the same letter, aimed at the Anabaptists, who were then beginning to be heard of, we find an emphatic appeal to the authority and belief of the Church (“totius orbis constans confessio”), which, as a rule, Luther was so ruthless in opposing. “It would be quite impious to deny that infant baptism agrees with the belief of the Church; to do so would be tantamount to denying the Church”; it was a special miracle that infant baptism had never been attacked by heretics; there was therefore good reason to hope that Christ, now, would trample the new foemen “under our feet.” Luther forgets that the ancient Church was not hampered by such a heel of Achilles as was his own teaching, viz. that the sacraments owed all their efficacy to faith. We can, however, quite understand his admission to Melanchthon: “I have always expected that Satan would lay violent hands on this weak spot, but he has chosen to stir up this pernicious quarrel, not through the Papists, but with the help of our own people.” The rise of the Anabaptist heresy was indeed merely a natural reaction against Luther’s doctrine of baptism.

  Seeing that the doctrine of baptism is of such importance to the Christian Church, we may be permitted to consider the inferences regarding the sacrament of baptism drawn in modern times from Luther’s conception of it, and from his whole attitude towards faith and Christianity. A domestic dispute among the Protestants at Bremen in 1905 on the validity of baptism not administered according to the usages of the Church, led to a remarkable discussion among theologians of broader views, some of whom went so far as to argue in Luther’s name and that of his Reformation, that baptism should be abolished.

  Johannes Gottschick in “Die Lehre der Reformation von der Taufe” (1906) defended the opinion that, according to the real views of the Reformers, baptism was valid even when conferred without any mention of the Trinity. — O. Scheel, on his side, pointed out in his book “Die dogmatische Behandlung der Tauflehre in der modernen positiven Theologie” (1906), that a contradiction with the principle of the Reformation was apparent even in Luther’s own theology, inasmuch as, according to this principle, baptism should merely be the proclaiming of the Word of God; in the ceremony of baptism, according to the Reformation teaching, which should be taken seriously, “the Word is all”; baptism is the solemn declaration that the child has been received into the congregation and the bestowal on it of the promise of salvation, hence requires no repetition. “As to when the Word works faith [in them] we do not know, nor is it necessary that theology should know”; the power of God knows the day and the hour. — The question: “Can baptism be regarded rightly as the exclusive act of reception into the Church?” was answered negatively by Rietschel in an article under that title in the “Deutsche Zeitschrift für Kirchenrecht,” in which he too appeals to Luther. At any rate Rietschel’s conclusion is, that, since Luther makes the Christian state dependent on faith, the baptismal act as such cannot, according to him, be of any essential importance; he thinks it possible to complete Luther’s doctrine on baptism in the light of that of Zwingli and Calvin, who were of opinion that the children of Christian parents, by their very birth were received into the Church.

  Luther’s attitude towards these questions was treated of more in detail by the editor of the Deutsch-Evangelische Blätter, Erich Haupt, Professor of theology at Halle.

  Haupt agrees with Gottschick as to the possibility of discarding the Trinitarian formula in baptism, in that, like Rietschel, all he considers necessary is the liturgical retention of some definite form of words. He also subscribes in principle to Rietschel’s contention that it is possible to ent
er the Church without baptism. Going even further, however, he declares with regard to Luther, that it was not even necessary to borrow from Zwingli and Calvin as Rietschel had proposed. “I believe the admission that salvation may be secured even without baptism, is a necessary corollary of Luther’s theories taken in the lump. One thing that lies at the bottom of Luther’s doctrine of the sacraments is that the salvation bestowed by a sacrament is none other than that communicated by the word of the preacher.... Nay, the sacrament is merely a particular form in which the Evangel comes to men.” But wherever there is faith, there is communion with God, and faith may be wherever there is the Word of God. Just as it was said of the Supper: “crede et manducasti,” so also it might be said: “crede et baptizatus es.” “To deny this would not merely be to ascribe a magical and mechanical effect to the sacrament, but would also imply the denial of the first principle of all Evangelical Christianity, viz. that for man’s salvation nothing further is necessary than to accept in faith the offer of God’s grace given him in the Gospel. In this the Reformation was simply holding to the words of Scripture (Mk. xvi. 16),” where, in the second part (“He that believeth not shall be condemned”), baptism is not mentioned. — Haupt, like Rietschel, draws attention to the fact, that, according to Luther, the unbelieving Christian, in spite of baptism, is inwardly no better than a heathen. Nevertheless Haupt is unwilling to allow that all children of Christian parents should simply be declared members of the Christian Church on account of their birth and regardless of baptism; for canonical reasons, to be considered Christians, they must be inducted into the congregation by the act of baptism, although it is “a logical outcome of the Reformer’s opinions that instances may occur where the Gospel awakens faith, and thereby incorporates in the congregation people who have never been baptised; but this is the invisible congregation of the ‘vere credentes,’ not the outward, visible, organised Church.” In order to enter children into the latter, the parents must express their wish; this is the meaning of the ceremony of baptism; the fact remains, that, dismissing the magical effect formerly ascribed to baptism, the principal thing is, “not Christian parentage as such, but the will of the parents as expressed in some way or other.”