Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  According to Luther, “there is, outside of Christ, no certainty concerning the Will of God”; for the secret Will of God threatens us with the dreadful sword of predestination to hell. Hence Harnack even goes so far as to say, that what is presupposed in Luther’s theories on the assurance of salvation is a belief “not in God in se — for God in se belongs to the Aristotelians — but rather in the God Whom the Holy Ghost reveals to the soul as manifest in Christ.”

  “God in se” and “God quoad nos” are two different things. By establishing such a distinction Luther “sets himself at variance with all theology as it had existed since the days of the apologists; here his aversion to the olden dogma is even more evident than in his reprobation of certain of its parts. Again and again, whenever the occasion arises, he repudiates what the olden theology had said of God and Christ, of the Will and Attributes of God, of the two natures in Christ, etc., with the remark: ‘This He has in se. Thereupon he immediately proceeds, with the words ‘But, quoad nos,’ to introduce his own new view, which to him is the main thing, if not the whole.”

  Such doctrines as have nothing to do with the justification of the sinner or the “confession of faith, as a personal experience,” recede so much into the background that Harnack feels justified in saying: “Though, under the formulas ‘God in se,’ ‘the Hidden God,’ ‘God’s Hidden Will,’ Luther left these old ideas standing, still they had practically ceased to exist as doctrines of faith. Of this there can be no doubt. That he did not throw them over completely is due to two facts, on the one hand to his impression that he found them in the Bible, and, on the other, to his never having systematically thought out the problems involved.” It must, however, be noted, that, as will be seen more clearly when we come to discuss Luther’s idea of faith, he was by no means ready to allow that such dogmas were not real “articles of faith.” This may be what leads Harnack here to say that they had “practically” ceased to exist as “actual articles of faith.”

  In connection with the dogmas touching God it must not be lost to sight that Luther, by his doctrine of predestination, of man’s unfreedom and of the inevitability of all that occurs, really endangered, if indeed he did not actually destroy, the Church’s olden conception of God as the Highest and Most Perfect Being. The cruel God of absolute predestination to hell is no longer a God worthy of the name.

  “Nor can it be gainsaid,” writes the Protestant theologian Arnold Taube, “that, given Luther’s idea of God and His Omnipotence, the negation of man’s free-will is a simple and natural consequence.” “Luther’s conception of God is at variance with the ethical personality of the God of Christianity, just as Schleiermacher’s whole pantheistic scheme of theology is useless in enabling us to grasp a religion so eminently moral as Christianity.” “Schleiermacher was quite logical in carrying to their consequences Luther’s ideas on predestination and free-will.” Luther’s idea of God, according to Taube, is simply “determinist.” “The negation [of free-will] can be escaped only by a theory of the Divine Omnipotence which regards God as controlling His own Power and thus as practically exercising restraint over Himself and limiting His Power. This, however, was not Luther’s theory, who takes the Divine Omnipotence to signify that which works all in all.”

  To an outsider it sounds strange to hear Harnack and others affirm that Luther swept away all the positive doctrines of antiquity; no less strange is it to see Luther, the furious opponent of Catholicism, being made by men who call themselves his followers into an advocate of the Rationalism which they themselves profess. In the interests of Rationalism these theologians take as their watchword Wilhelm Herrmann’s dictum of Luther’s doctrine of penance: “We must strive to push ahead with what Luther began and left undone.” The least they demand is, that, as Ferdinand Kattenbusch puts it, Protestant theology should hold fast to the “earlier” Luther, to those days “when Luther’s genius was as yet unbroken.” In this wise they contrive to wrench away Luther from the foundations of that faith to which he still wished to remain true and which the “orthodox” at a later date claimed him to have ever retained.

  It is well known how, following in Ritschl’s footsteps, Harnack’s ability, learning, and outspokenness have proved extremely awkward to the more conservative theologians. He “carried on Luther’s interrupted work,” declares Herrmann, and set up again in all its purity Luther’s early conception of faith against a theology which had been stifled in orthodoxy and pietism.

  We must, however, in the light of Protestant criticism, examine a little more closely Luther’s attitude towards the ancient Christian conception of faith.

  Starting first of all from faith subjectively considered and examining Luther’s doctrine of the personal appropriation of the content of faith, we immediately find ourselves brought face to face with his doctrine of justification, for he has scarcely anything to say of the faith of the individual save in so far as this faith operates justification. Here all the other truths to be believed tend to disappear from his purview and one only truth remains, viz.: Through Christ I am pleasing to God. It is no wonder if many of his followers, even to the present day, see in this doctrine of the certainty of having in Christ a Gracious God, the only dogma handed down by Luther. Does he not, for instance, in one of the most widely read passages of his works, viz., in the Preface to Romans in his translation of the New Testament, concisely define faith as a “daring and lively trust in the grace of God, so strong that one would be ready to die for it a thousand times over”? “Such a trust makes a man cheerful, defiant and light-hearted in his attitude towards God and all creatures; such is the working of the Holy Ghost by faith.” “Faith is the work of God in us whereby we are transformed and born anew in God.”

  Again, if we take faith objectively, i.e. as the sum-total of revelation, then again, at least according to many passages, faith must be merged in the one consoling conviction that we receive the forgiveness of sins from God in Christ.

  “The Reformation,” says Harnack quite rightly, regarded all the rest of dogma as little more than “a grand testimony to God, Who has sent Jesus Christ, His Son, to liberate us from sin, to save us and set us free. Finding this testimony in dogma, every other incentive to determine it more accurately disappeared.” It is, however, important to note, that “ancient dogma was not merely the witness of the Gospel to a Gracious God, to Christ the Saviour, and to the forgiveness of sins”; it comprised a number of other profound and far-reaching doctrines also binding upon all, “above all a certain knowledge of God and of the world, and a law of belief.” According to Harnack, however, “faith and this knowledge of God and law of belief were unguardedly jumbled up.” In short, “a conservative attitude towards olden dogma is not imposed on the Reformation by its principles.”

  “The orthodoxy of the Luther-zealots of the 16th century had its basis in the reformers’ retention of a series of old Catholic presuppositions and dogmas which were really in disagreement with their own fundamental ideas.” “Thus,” proceeds Harnack, “the Reformation, i.e. the conception of the Evangelical faith, spells the end of dogma unless indeed, in the stead of the old-time dogma, we put a sort of phantom dogma.” The Reformation replaced the demand for faith, which corresponds with the law, by the freedom of the children of God, who are not under the constraint of the law of belief but rejoice in the gift bestowed on them, viz. in the promise of the forgiveness of sins in Christ.

  In this, again, there is much that is true, even though we may not be willing to subscribe to all the author says. Luther undoubtedly lays undue stress on those tenets of the faith which seem to him to refer to justification and spiritual freedom, and he does so to the detriment of what remains. “Hence the Gospel,” Luther says for instance, “is nothing else but the preaching of Christ, the Son of God and the Son of David, true God and Man, Who by His death and again-rising from the dead has overcome sin, death and hell for all those who believe in Him.” The Evangelists, so he says, describe the conquest of “Sin, death
and hell” at great length, the others “more briefly like St. Peter and St. Paul”; at any rate the “Gospel must not be made into a code of laws or a handbook.” This was indeed to raise the standard of revolt against doctrine. Well might Adolf Hausrath, in a passage already quoted, speak of Luther as “the greatest revolutionary of the 16th century.”

  The question touched upon above deserves, however, to be looked into still more closely in the light of what other more moderate Protestant theologians say.

  Gustav Kawerau, speaking from such a standpoint, points out that Luther “runs the risk of confusing the Evangelical view of faith with that which sees in faith the acceptance of a string of doctrinal propositions, i.e. with that faith which is made up of so and so many articles, all of such importance that to reject one involves the dropping of the others.”

  This is so true that the historian and theologian in question rather understates the case by saying that Luther merely “runs the risk.” It is no difficult task in this connection to instance definite statements to this effect made by him, or even to enumerate the actual “articles” of faith he regarded as essential. In No. 12 of the articles of Schwabach (Torgau) he says, as Kawerau himself points out: “Such a Church is nothing else than the faithful who hold, believe and teach the above articles and propositions.... For where the Gospel is preached and the Sacraments are rightly used, there we have the holy Christian Church.”

  Amongst such articles Luther, following the example of the oldest Creeds, includes even the Virginity of Mary.

  It was to this that the theologian, Otto Scheel, recently alluded when compelled to make a stand against those theologians who, particularly during the years 1519-1523, miss in Luther any adherence to the articles of the faith. Scheel appeals to what Luther says of Mary’s Virginity in his German version of his “De votis monasticis” (1521 and 1522). In one passage Luther, referring to the thesis that every single article of faith must be believed, otherwise, no matter how earnest and virtuous be one’s life, everlasting damnation is certain, brings forward as an instance our Lady’s virginity: The religious, in their “bawdy-houses of Satan” [the monasteries], by their blasphemous vows deny the whole Gospel truth, consequently far more than merely that article concerning Mary. Hence they cannot be saved even did they possess “Mary’s virginity and holiness.” “Here we have,” rightly concludes Scheel, “even as early as 1521-22 a view of faith which does not differ materially from that which we meet with in Luther after the controversies on the Sacrament.” This, however, means, according to him, “that we must regard Luther’s development in a light different from that now usual.”

  Which then does Scheel hold to be the correct view? He finds in Luther at all times contradictions which admit of no escape: “The contradictions which clearly exist at a later date in Luther’s life’s work were, in point of fact, always latent within him.... This is equivalent to saying that we must regard Luther’s work as a whole, and that, too, just in its most vital parts, as one marred by contradictions which it is impossible to explain away.”

  Since Luther’s demand that all the articles of faith should be accepted without distinction was one which he had taken over from Catholicism, we should, continues Scheel, “seek in the Middle Ages the clue to his attitude instead of assigning to him the solution of modern problems as some are disposed to do.” In this, however, Scheel is proposing nothing new, but rather something that stands to reason; the method he suggests has, moreover, always been followed by Catholic critics of Luther’s theology.

  Catholics found without difficulty plentiful statements of Luther’s in support of the inviolability of the whole chain of olden dogma, so great had been the influence exerted over him by the convictions of his youth. It was an easy matter for controversialists to turn such statements of his against Luther himself, the more so, since, eminently justified though they were within Catholicism, they were utterly out of place on his mouth and furnish a striking condemnation of his own rash undertaking — a fact to which he, however, refused to open his eyes. For instance, in the very evening of his days when he himself could look back on his destruction of so many of the dogmas of the olden Church, speaking to the Sacramentarians, Luther says of the traditional doctrines: “This is what I thought, yea and said too, viz. that the devil is never idle; no sooner has he started one heresy than he must needs start others so that no error ever remains alone. When the ring has once been broken it is no longer a ring; it has lost its strength and is ever snapping anew.... Whoever does not or will not believe aright one article assuredly does not believe any article with a true and earnest faith.... Hence we may say straight out: Believe all, or nothing! The Holy Ghost will not allow Himself to be divided or sundered, so as to teach or make us believe one article aright and another awry.” “Otherwise,” so he concludes, all unconsciously justifying his Catholic critics, “no heretic would ever be condemned nor would there be a heretic on all the earth; for it is the nature of heretics to tamper first with one article only and then bit by bit to deny them all.... If the bell have but a single crack, it no longer rings true and is quite useless.”

  It was on the strength of this principle of the absolutely binding character of all the truths of religion (at least of those which he himself retained) that he ventured to depict Zwingli as the biggest rebel against the faith.

  “Zwingel, who was miserably slain on the battlefield, and Œcolampadius who died of grief on that account, perished in their sins because they obstinately persisted in their errors.” He could not “but despair of Zwingel’s salvation,” for the latter was an arch-heretic.

  So harsh a judgment on Zwingli is, however, quite unjustifiable if we start from the more liberal conception of faith which Luther had once advocated together with the stricter view, and which indeed he never in so many words retracted. On such grounds Kawerau may well take Zwingli under his wing against Luther. His words will be quoted a little further on. Meanwhile, however, it must be pointed out that Luther’s unkindly criticism of Zwingli is not to be explained merely by the above view of faith. In his Life of Luther Adolf Hausrath throws some light on its psychological side. “Language so insulting as Luther’s,” he says, “no bishop had ever used against Zwingli,” and he lays his hand boldly on the weak spot with the object of bringing out Luther’s astounding want of logic. He had proclaimed the right of examining Scripture freely and without being tied down by the teaching of the Church, yet he refused to allow Zwingli such freedom; the latter “had applied the principle indiscriminately to everything (?) handed down by the Church, whereas Luther wished to put aside merely what was contrary to his convictions on justification by faith alone, or to the plain sense of Scripture.” Luther “fancied he could guess who had inspired the Sacramentarians with their blasphemies. Thereby he envenomed the controversy from the very outset. For him there could be no truce with the devil.” “In any sign of life given by the Swiss he at once sniffed the ‘devil’s breeches.’” Luther himself admits that “to begin with, it was Zwingli’s wrong doctrine and the fact ‘that the Swiss wished to be first,’” which had led to the estrangement. The “wrong doctrine” he detected, thanks to that gift of infallibility which led the Sacramentarians to call his behaviour “papistic.” We have here, according to Hausrath, a “religious genius, who, by the force of his personality and word, sought to make all others bow to the law of his mind.” “We must resign ourselves to the fact that this great man had the shortcomings which belong to his virtues. Disputatiousness and love to pick a quarrel, faults which simply represented the other side of his firm faith, and which some had already deplored in the young monk at Erfurt, Wittenberg and Leipzig, had naturally not been abated by his many victorious combats, and, now, more than ever, Oldecop’s words were true: ‘He wanted to be in the right in all the disputations and was fond of quarrelling.’ The fact is that Luther was no exception to the rule, that man finds nothing harder to bear well than success.”

  Nevertheless, to return to th
e question of faith, Luther had already laid down in his writings certain marks by which it might be ascertained whether a man is a believer or not, and which at any rate scarcely tally with the criteria he applies to Zwingli. Judged by these Zwingli would emerge quite blameless.

  Kawerau points this out in defence of Zwingli: “The idea of faith,” he says, “which Luther had newly evolved, in opposition to the Catholic assent to the teaching of the Bible and the Church, led logically to determining from a man’s attitude towards Christ and His saving Grace whether he was a true believer or not; Luther himself frequently made this his criterion; for instance, in answer to the question: Who is a member of the Church, and whom must I regard as my dear brother in Christ? He replies, all those ‘Who confess Christ as sent by God the Father in order to reconcile us to Him by His death and to obtain for us grace’; or again: All ‘those who put their trust in Christ alone and confess Him in faith,’ or yet again: ‘All those who seek the Lord with their whole heart and soul ... and who trust in nothing but in God’s mercy.’” But had not Zwingli loudly proclaimed himself to be one of these?

  “In such utterances of Luther’s we find,” according to Kawerau, “summed up the purely religious and Evangelical conception of faith.” Here there is no question of any accepting of the several articles of faith, of any submission to a “string of doctrinal propositions,” of any “faith made up of so and so many ‘articles’ all of such importance that to reject one involves the dropping of the others.” According to this theologian Luther was untrue to his own basic theories when he assailed Zwingli as he did. Kawerau also agrees with Hausrath in holding that the principal cause of Luther’s estrangement was a psychological one which indeed constituted the weakest spot in his whole position, viz. his identification of his own theological outbuilding of an article of faith, with its religious content, or, to speak more plainly, his setting himself up as the sole authority after having set aside that of the Church.