Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Addressing the representatives of Lutheran “dogmatic theology,” Harnack says: “Luther’s reformation created a new point of departure for the development of the Christian belief in the Word of God”; “it set aside every form of infallibility that might have offered an outward assurance for one’s belief, the Church’s infallible organisation and infallible tradition and the infallible code of Scripture. Thus an end was made of the conception of Christianity from which dogma had sprung, viz. the Christian faith, the sure knowledge of the final causes of all things and thus of the whole Divine scheme of salvation. Christian faith has now become merely a firm assurance of receiving forgiveness of sins from God, as the Father of Jesus Christ, and of living under Him in His kingdom. This at the same time spells the ruin of any infallible dogma; for how can any dogma be unchangeable and authentic, thought out and formulated as it was by finite men, living in sin, and devoid of every outward guarantee?” If, nevertheless, Luther accepted and maintained certain aspects of ancient dogma, he did so, not as establishing “side by side with faith a law of faith based on particular outward promises,” but rather “from his unshaken conviction that much of this dogma corresponded exactly with the Gospel or Word of God, and that this correspondence was self-evident”; “as dogma, it did not constitute a rule.”

  In some respects, for instance in this very matter, what Harnack says stands in need of correction. He is at times too fond of making out his own Christianity without dogma to have been also that of Luther. We just heard him say that the remnant of olden dogma which Luther preserved, “as dogma, did not constitute a rule.” He would, however, have been nearer the truth in saying that, logically, as dogma, it ought not to have constituted a rule. There can be no doubt that Luther — as will be shown below — insists, though in contradiction with other “basic ideas and with the spirit of his reformation,” that the Christian verities which he leaves standing must be embraced as revealed articles of the Christian belief and indubitable truths of faith. Even where he does not insist upon this he still takes it for granted that faith in the whole of revelation (“fides historica”) precedes that faith which consists in the assurance of the forgiveness of sins. Even Harnack has to admit, that, with Luther, “dogma qua dogma, remains to some extent in force” owing “to the logic of things.”

  Luther, according to another passage in Harnack, “under the pressure of circumstances” and the storms raised against him by the fanatics and the Anabaptists, was drawn into a dogmatising current of which the issue was the Augsburg Confession. To the question: Did Luther’s reformation do away with the ancient dogma? we must reply, that, at least, it “demolished its foundation — as indeed our Catholic opponents rightly object against us — that it was a mighty principle rather than a new doctrine, and that its subsequent history through the age of Orthodoxy, Pietism and Rationalism down to the present day is less a falling away than a natural development.”

  Even before Harnack’s day this was virtually the standpoint of some of the best Protestant judges. It had been perceived long before that the purely Evangelical theory led much further from the ancient dogmas than Protestant orthodoxy was disposed to admit. Even according to so conservative a theologian as Johann August Neander, “the spirit of the Reformation did not at once attain to a clear consciousness of itself”; Luther indeed, even here, “had reached the consciousness of the pure Evangelical belief, thanks to the principle of a faith which is a free outgrowth of the Divine power within; yet, owing to the controversies on the Supper and to the Peasant War, this clear consciousness again became eclipsed.” Neander finds the best statement of Luther’s new ideas in those works which are most radically opposed to the traditional teaching of the Church of old. Albert Ritschl, the well-known leader of the free Protestant school, likewise declared: “The Lutheran theory of life has not remained true to itself; it has been hemmed in and dulled by the stress laid on objective dogma. The pure doctrine as taught in the schools is in reality merely a passing, not the final, form of Protestantism.”

  All these critics, Harnack in particular, though blaming Luther for not drawing the right conclusions, are nevertheless at one in their outspoken admiration of the powerful thinker and brave spokesman of the new belief, and particularly of those theses of his which approach most closely their own ideal of an unfettered theology. In their opinion Luther is to remain the hero of yore, though his garb and attitude will no longer be the same as those to which Protestantism had previously been accustomed. It is perhaps not superfluous to mention this because otherwise the strong things some of the critics say might, taken together, give the impression that their main aim and endeavour was to decry Luther. Probably enough Harnack and his friends failed to foresee how unfavourable a view their censures, taken in the lump, might produce of Luther’s person and work. Harnack, however, in one passage, pays a strange tribute to Luther’s conservatism, one, no doubt, which would appeal to the Reformer’s more old-fashioned friends. He points out, that, “we owe it to him, that, even to the present day, these formularies [the olden creeds] are still in Protestantism a living power”; nay, such is his ignorance of the state of things in Catholicism, that he is convinced that it is only in Protestantism that these creeds still “live,” whereas, “in the Roman Church, they are but a dead and obsolete heirloom”; Luther, according to one bold dictum of Harnack’s, was really “the restorer of ancient dogma.”

  Among the olden doctrines thrown over by Luther his Protestant critics rightly instance the Canon of Scripture and the right of the Church to interpret the Bible. They corroborate strikingly from Luther’s writings the results which we reached above, a circumstance which may surprise Protestant readers.

  If, according to Luther, the doctrine of the oldest confessions of faith are only to be retained because they can be directly proved from the Bible, then the Bible itself with all its books, so such Protestants argue, must stand firm and inviolable. Now, awkwardly enough, Luther himself saps the authority of the Canon.

  “If the attitude is justified which Luther takes up in his famous Prefaces to the various books of the New Testament,” says Harnack (cp. prefaces to the Epistle of James, to the Epistle to the Hebrews and to the Apocalypse), “then an end is made of the infallible Canon of Scripture. It is here of the utmost importance historically, though in itself a matter of indifference, that we find Luther, especially after the controversy on the Supper, making statements to the effect that every letter of Scripture is fundamental to the Christian faith; the flagrant contradiction involved in the assertion that a thing holds and at the same time does not hold can only be solved by saying that it does not. The same follows from Luther’s views on faith, for, according to him, this is produced by the Holy Ghost through the preaching of the Word of God. To-day too, all Protestants are agreed that historical criticism of Scripture is not unevangelical, though this unanimity of opinion extends only as far as the ‘principle,’ and many refuse to carry it out in practice.”— “Luther, at the very time when he was waging so brave a war against the authority of the Councils, also opposed Scriptural infallibility, and, indeed, how could he do otherwise?... There can be no doubt that Luther’s attitude towards the New Testament, as we find it set forth in the Prefaces and in one or two other passages, is the correct one, i.e. that which really tallies with his belief.”

  As F. Loofs points out, Luther leaves us without any outward guarantee for the authority of the Canon of the Bible. Loofs quotes, for instance, Luther’s saying: “Hence God must tell you within your heart: This is God’s Word.” “Luther’s criticism,” the same writer says, “did not spare even those books which he allowed to be truly prophetic or apostolic.... He frankly admitted the human element in Scripture.”

  If Luther’s fundamental opposition to the faith once delivered is already apparent from his criticism of the Bible, still more is this the case when we come to look into the freedom he allowed in the interpretation of the sense of the Bible.

  As Harnack puts i
t: In Luther’s view “the Church is based on something which every Christian, no matter how humble, can see and test, viz. on the Word of God as apprehended by pure reason. This, of course, was tantamount to a claim to ascertain the true verbal sense of Holy Scripture.... But Luther never foresaw how far this rule would lead.”

  Luther himself often put his principle to such arbitrary usage as to prove a warning to others (above, vol. iv., p f., 418 f.), and to exclude the possibility of any settled dogma. “The flagrant contradiction,” says Harnack, “into which he was led by criticising the Bible whilst all the time holding the idea he did about its inspiration, he contrived to explain away by reading the Evangel itself into texts which presented a difficulty.” “In Holy Scripture, the infallible authority, only that was to be found, which on other grounds was already established as the true doctrine.”

  Hence in the matter of the Bible, so Harnack has it, “Criticism, in order to be according to Luther’s mind, would have to go against him in the interests of faith.”

  Luther’s abandonment of the Church’s standpoint with regard to the Bible is closely bound up with his renunciation of the Church’s teaching office, of the hierarchy and of all respect for tradition. This meant, as modern Protestant critics admit, the destruction of the whole theory of tradition and, in fact, of all ecclesiastical authority, though, on Harnack’s own admission, ancient Church writers, especially “subsequent to Irenæus,” rely much on such authority.

  “Luther was antagonistic to all these authorities,” says the same scholar, “to the infallibility of Church, Pope, and Councils, to every constitutional right of the Church to pronounce on the truth and, on principle, to all the doctrinal formularies of the past.” His later writing: “Von den Conciliis,” etc. (1539) proves this.

  Nor have we yet exhausted the list of grievances against Luther. Not only did he forsake the ancient teaching on justification, merit and works, but he even declared war on human free will, though belief in its existence is a truth of natural philosophy and though the Church had ever held it in the highest esteem. He put aside in its primitive form the basic dogma of original sin. The doctrine of actual sin and its distinction into mortal and venial found no favour with him, nor did the related doctrine of the existence of a purgatory. He completely destroyed the teaching of antiquity on Grace by his new discovery of the law of absolute necessity which rules all things, not excluding even the actions of the human mind and heart; according to Luther “Grace is the fatherly disposition of God towards us, Who for Christ’s sake calls sinful man to Him, accepts him and wins his confidence through faith in the Christus passus.” This fatherly disposition of God no man can ever in the least resist if destined by the Divine Omnipotence to receive the faith; those, however, who are not numbered among the elect, know not any such invitation, or rather constraint, for the secret Will of God unfailingly dooms them to damnation.

  After giving the above definition of Grace, Harnack asks, “What room then is there for a Sacrament?” For Catholics the Sacraments were pillars of the Church’s life and of her teaching. With them Luther was perfectly willing to dispense.

  “He not only strove,” says Harnack, “to break away completely from the ancient or mediaeval conception, but he actually brought it to nought by his doctrine of the one sacrament, which is the Word.” The Sacraments being to him a “peculiar form of the saving Word of God, viz. of the realisation of the ‘promissio Dei,’ he reduces them to two (three), or, indeed, to one, viz. the Word of God. He showed that even the most enlightened Fathers had had but a dim notion of this so important matter.... Having practically laid the whole system in ruins, he rests again on the one, simple grand act, which is constantly being repeated in every Christian’s life, viz. the awakening of faith thanks to the ‘gratia.’”

  Luther turned his back not only on the ancient teaching concerning the Sacraments, particularly the Sacrifice of the Mass, but also on the whole outward worship of the Church.

  “His attitude towards Divine Worship in the Church was a radical one. Here too he destroyed not only the mediaeval tradition, but even that of the ancient Church such as we may trace it back right into the 2nd century. The public worship of the Church, to him, is nothing more than the worship of individuals united in time and place.... The priest and the sacrifice in the usual sense of the terms are done away with, and all worth is denied to those specific ecclesiastical actions which were formerly held to be both wholesome and necessary.” “The ‘divine service,’ particularly that of the Word, in which he nevertheless wished the congregation to take part,” “can have no other motive ... than to promote individual worship, for God deals with us only through the Word which is not tied up with any particular persons.” Hence public worship does no more than “edify faith through the preaching of the Divine Word and the common offering of prayer and praise.”

  Of vast importance in this change and even more far-reaching in its consequences was Luther’s abrogation of the ancient conception of the Church. As bound up with it, he also harshly set aside the invocation of Saints, that vital element of the olden worship.

  The ancient teaching on perfection had to make room for new theories, for it seemed to him to lay too much stress on man’s own works. And yet “we cannot but admit,” says Harnack, “that Luther’s efforts to create a new ideal of life were not characterised by any clear discrimination.” The reason may be “that the times were not yet ripe for it.” In those days of public stress “religion’s chief business was to bring consolation amidst the miseries of life. To heal the soul oppressed with sorrow for sin and to alleviate the evils in the world,” this was what was mainly aimed at. This, however, was scarcely to do justice to religion and to its sublime tasks.

  According to Luther the Church had, even from the outset, given to human reason a larger sphere than was due to it. Even at the cradle of the Church Christian philosophy had taken her stand, and, with her torch of reason, had pointed out the road to faith. Luther, however, conceived “a distrust of reason itself not to be explained simply by his distrust of it as the main prop of self-righteousness. He grew hardened in his bold defiance of reason, surrendering himself to that suspicious Catholic [!] way of looking at things, which reveres the wisdom of God and sees the stamp of the divine truth in paradox and in the contradictio in adiecto.... No one, however, can despise reason and learning with impunity, and Luther himself was punished by the darkening of his own views on faith.” “That is a dangerous kind of theologism which fancies that the knowledge which comes from worldly education may simply be ignored. The reformers were too ready to cut themselves adrift from worldly culture where the latter seemed to trench on the domain of faith.... The Reformation buried beneath a mass of hatred and injustice much of the valuable learning the age possessed and thereby made itself responsible for the later crises of Protestantism.”

  “Luther,” says Loofs, “by laying stress on that antithesis between human reason and the divine ‘foolishness,’ which was so intimately bound up with his own deepest and most fundamental views (and who ever thundered more loudly against the ‘Frau Hulda’ of natural reason, that ‘devil’s whore’ and ‘arch enemy of the faith’ than did Luther?), imposed on his following the old Catholic idea (which he himself had overthrown) of the verbal inspiration of the Canon, and did so so thoroughly that after-ages were unable to shake themselves free of it. Nay, by rightly proscribing any allegorical exegesis, he made the burden of this old Catholic heritage even more oppressive in Protestantism than it had ever been before.”

  Depreciation of reason, had, in Luther’s case, a bad effect on his whole teaching concerning God. As far back as theology went this had formed the centre of religious discussion. The Fathers had by preference dwelt on questions which concerned God, His Oneness and Triunity, His attributes and His relations with the world and man. Luther, according to the admission of Protestant critics, introduced here certain arbitrary and very unfair limitations. It was his wish, as he frequently de
clares, that God should be meditated on only as Jesus Christ our Consoler and our Saviour. He has a strange and seemingly instinctive aversion to concerning himself with the Almighty Being, in Whom nevertheless “we live, and move, and are.” The Deus absconditus appals him. According to him it is impossible to “treat of Predestination without being crucified and suffering the pains of death, or without loss to ourselves and secret anger against God.” Predestination “determines in the first instance who is and who is not to believe, who is and who is not to be saved from sin”; of this Luther cannot speak without at the same time solemnly emphasising that it is only thanks to it that we can “hope to conquer sin,” as otherwise the devil, “as we know, would soon overpower us all.” Yet we ought not, like the “reprobate spirits,” “explore the abyss of Divine Providence,” because otherwise we shall either “be brought to despair or kick over the traces.” The old Adam must “have been put to death before being able to endure this and to drink the strong wine,” i.e. a man must first have learnt, like Luther, “to stake all in God,” and “defy” all things in Him.

  Thus it comes about that Luther ladles out reproaches indiscriminately to the philosophers who occupy themselves with God as known to reason, and the theologians who pursue the supernatural knowledge of God.

  “Often enough did Luther deride as a product of blind reason,” writes Harnack, “that knowledge of God, which instead of thinking of God in Christ alone, ‘sophistically’ enumerates His attributes and speculates on His will, viz. the whole ‘metaphysical’ doctrine of God.” If “God be considered apart from Christ,” then He appears, according to Luther, merely as the “terrible Judge from Whom we can await nothing but punishment.”