Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  When other Lutherans taunted them with their separatist tendencies so much at variance with Luther’s view of the outward government of the Church by the State, the Pietists retorted by appealing in defence of their conventicle system and so-called “collegia pietatis,” to Luther’s Church-Apart of the True Believers. They quoted those passages of the “Deudsche Messe und Ordnung Gottis Diensts” (1526), where Luther lays stress on the ideal kinship of those who earnestly desire to be Christians, and characterises the services in the Church as worthless for those who “are already Christians.”

  “Thus quite a struggle raged around Luther’s person.”

  Books appeared on the one side with such titles as “Lutherus Antipietista” and on the other: “Luther the precursor of Spener who faithfully followed in the footsteps of the former.” Count L. von Zinzendorf, with his Pietistic leanings, claimed to be a perfect counterpart of Luther; he wished, as he said in 1749, to be “what Luther had been in part, and what, according to the logical sequence from given premises, he should and ought to have been.” “The Luther who still lives and teaches in Count von Zinzendorf,” was the title of a work by one of the latter’s followers. Things went so far that, in the controversies, it became necessary to ask: Which Luther do you mean, the earlier or the later? Nor was even this sufficient, for Consistorialrat J. A. Bengel of Württemberg (†1752) actually distinguished three Luthers: “the first and the last,” he said, “were all right, but the middle one, owing to the heat of controversy, was sometimes rather spoiled.”

  Among the Protestant writers of the so-called “Enlightenment” we again find Luther under a different guise.

  They disagreed with the Pietists’ renunciation both of the conclusions arrived at by reason and of worldly pleasures; in the latter respect they found in Luther a welcome advocate of enjoyment of the good things of the world. His advocacy of a cheerful addiction to earthly pleasures was summed up by them in the saying attributed to him: Who loves not women, wine and song, etc. On the other hand, by setting Luther on a rationalist plane, they blotted out his essential characteristics; they showed no comprehension for his faith though they were not disposed to minimise his labours for the amendment of religion and for the bringing of light out of darkness.

  Gottfried Herder extols him, now as a church founder, now as a writer, and yet again as a great German. Luther’s doctrines seem to him of comparatively small account, but he is willing enough to depict him as a model of cheerful, “strong, free, wholesome and exalted sensibility.” He is unsparing in his criticism of Luther’s attacks on the Epistle of James and adds: “The sphere of the Spirit of God is wider than Luther’s field of vision.” In these circles critics were disposed to be bolder and more outspoken than among the orthodox and the Pietists; they also found other things to censure in Luther. Lessing condemns in the severest language his vanity and irascibility: “O God, what a terrible lesson to our pride,” he exclaims, “and how much do anger and revenge degrade even the best and holiest of men.” He nevertheless opines that Luther’s faults had been of service to him in his great task.

  Those few who really perused Luther’s writings marvelled at his extravagant ideas about his divine mission and struggles with the devil, about the end of the world and Antichrist. As a general rule, however, they conveniently skipped all that Luther said against human reason and had no eye for his energetic supernaturalism and his insistence on the bare letter of Scripture.

  Among those infected with the rationalism of the age, antagonism to Catholicism undoubtedly helped to shape their view of Luther. They felt their whole outlook to be at variance with that of Catholicism. Under these circumstances it was natural that Luther should be depicted first and foremost as the liberator from the Papacy; in Luther they recognised, not without some show of reason, “the opponent of all outward authority, of everything Catholic in every domain of the life of the mind” — an argument, moreover, which occasionally they turned against the Lutheran “Church” itself.

  Thus was the dictator of Wittenberg, such as the Orthodox knew him, transformed into a “champion of freedom”; the rationalists made his pen the vehicle of their own ideas. Luther became the “herald of the Enlightenment.” He began what others were to carry on later. “A little longer,” so one wrote in 1797, “and the heavenly light which Luther only saw dimly as in a dream will stream in upon us in all its brightness.”

  The Berlin leader of this movement, A. F. Büsching, as early as 1748, said of himself that he had seen “Luther in his true greatness and as known only to the few; how, in matters of religion, he had absolutely refused to depend on any man, but had relied simply on his own insight and convictions and what had been borne in upon him by diligent reading of the Bible.” The Halle editor of Luther’s Works, J. G. Walch, vaunted among the other services rendered by Luther that of having established freedom of conscience; in the eyes of Julius Wegscheider he was the “libertatis cogitandi assertor”; it was this which inclined even Frederick II of Prussia to respect him, though otherwise he considered him a “furious monk” and a “barbarous writer.” — Those who thus credited Luther with tolerance “had no inkling of the antithesis between this idea and the true Luther.” His wanton way of dealing with the Canon of Scripture was urged against the Orthodox in defence of a more critical treatment of Holy Writ. Lessing, referring to Luther’s whole system of Bible interpretation, wrote to J. M. Goeze, the chief pastor of St. Catherine’s church at Hamburg: “What greater authority had Luther than any other Doctor of Divinity?”

  Less dangerous to Lutheranism, and in itself harmless enough, though quite characteristic of the age, was the discovery then made, that Luther was the very personification of a public benefactor and great servant of the State. The Leipzig Professor, C. H. Wieland, described him as a “scholar to whom all were indebted”; Luther, he says, “unmasked obsolete prejudices and opened up to his contemporaries in more than one direction fresh prospects of a coming enlargement of the circle of human knowledge. And this great man was a German.” From the good bourgeois point of view the fact that Luther had, as it was thought, cultivated respect for the secular authorities was a great feather in his cap. Such people readily shut their eyes to the severity with which Luther had been wont to lash the rulers, even the highest in the land, and to the fact that he had undermined the very foundations of authority. The patriotic thought that “this great man was a German” was made to cover all his failings.

  This sort of patriotism gradually produced a new pattern of Luther, differing in many respects from the others. Particularly after the outbreak of the great German wars of deliverance and the burning enthusiasm for the Fatherland which they called forth many felt that they could not sufficiently extol Luther as the great German, and a typical child of his beloved country.

  Gœthe repeatedly called Luther a “great man.” But what, above all, prepossessed him in his favour was, first, his “Struggle against priestcraft and the hierarchy,” and, then, his translation of the Bible. “By him we have been freed from the fetters of intellectual narrowness … and have once more the courage to stand upright on God’s earth and to realise our own divinely endowed nature.” The poet, himself a true child of his age, had no eye for the truths defended by Catholicism against Lutheranism. In a letter to Knebel dated August 22, 1817, when the centenary of Luther’s promulgation of his Theses was being celebrated far and wide, he said: “Between ourselves, the only interesting thing in the whole business [the Reformation] is Luther’s character; it is also the only thing that really impresses the masses. All the rest is worthless trumpery of which we still feel the burden to-day.” As for the usual view of Luther he characterises it as mythological.

  7. The Modern Picture of Luther

  In the so-called Romantic School the picture of Luther tends to become as shifty as the character of the age.

  The Romanticists, like the poets they were, were anxious, as in other fields so also in respect of Luther, to make a stand against th
e shallowness of the “Enlightenment.”

  Zacharias Werner, while still a Protestant, wrote in Luther’s honour his drama “Die Weihe der Kraft,” and, then, as a Catholic, the drama entitled “Die Weihe der Unkraft.”

  Novalis, who was deeply read in Luther’s works, was of opinion that he, like Protestantism itself, was something democratic; to him Luther appeared a “hothead.” Disgusted with Lutheranism and vaguely conscious of the beauty of the past he was anxious to see the scattered faithful once more united in a new Christianity. “Luther,” so he wrote, “treated Christianity as he liked, failed to recognise its spirit and introduced another letter and another religion, viz. the sacred principle of the Bible over all.” A “fire from heaven” had indeed presided over the commencement of his career; later on, however, the source of “holy inspiration had run dry” and worldliness gained the upper hand in Luther.

  The religious spirit which had animated the Romanticists and had led them to cast yearning eyes at the Middle Ages was soon extinguished by the new criticism, historical and Biblical, and by the spread of infidelity.

  The latest efforts to portray Luther

  Luther had now to submit to being criticised by scholars who prided themselves on being dispassionate and were not slow to pass judgment on the characteristics, whether actual or imaginary, which they seemed to discover in him. What the Göttingen Church-historian, Gottlieb Jakob Planck, representing the so-called “Pragmatic” writers had begun — much to the disgust of the then Luther devotees — was pushed forward by many other Protestants. The lengths to which independent criticism has gone of recent years is emphasised in the Göttingen theologian, Paul de Lagarde. Typical of his remarks is the following: “That great scold Luther, who could see no further than the tips of his toes, by his demagogy threw Germany into barbarism and dissension.” It was particularly with Luther’s “coarseness” and tendency to indulge in vulgar abuse that the critics were disposed to find fault. Some indeed were inclined to excuse him. Hardly any other writer, however, in seeking to exculpate Luther has used language so startling as that of Adolf Hausrath the Heidelberg scholar who, in his Life of Luther (1904), “thanks God for the barbarism of these polemics,” and goes so far as to say that, “since Luther’s road led to the goal it must have been the right one.”

  Of the three comprehensive and most widely known biographies of Luther, that of Hausrath depicts Luther from the standpoint of a liberal divine. Here Luther almost ceases to be a theologian, or at any rate the theological problems amidst which Luther lived are scarcely even mentioned. On the other hand, in the biography by Theodore Kolde of Erlangen (2nd ed., 1893), the Wittenberg professor again figures as a teacher; his scholarly two-volume work is positive in tendency and regards Luther as a preacher of truth against the darkness of the Middle Ages — which, however, the author has misunderstood and fails to treat fairly. The third large modern work on Luther, also in two volumes, is by the late Julius Köstlin of Halle and Breslau; a new edition was published in 1903 with the collaboration of G. Kawerau; here the picture of Luther is a product of the so-called theology of compromise.

  Wilhelm Maurenbrecher, professor of History at Bonn and Leipzig, said truly in his “Studien” (1874), that the traditional Luther “myth” the “stuff and rubbish” which the past had looked upon as true history, deserved to be cleared away. He traces back to Sleidanus the “current ‘fable convenue’” about Luther; this writer, in the work he published in 1555, which became a classic, had begun the process of “moderating and toning down the theological colours” of Luther’s picture, in such a way as to make Luther the living expression of the “already finished programme of the Protestant princes and theologians.” He lifted the author of the religious upheaval “out of his democratic, revolutionary setting” and stamped him as a “model” for theologians. Maurenbrecher, as a layman, is very frank in his opinion as to the central question of Bible-interpretation: “It is undoubtedly the right of every man at the present day to appeal to Luther’s own example, in favour of the unfettered freedom of Bible-research.”

  By an objective portrayal of his characteristics, Protestant non-theologians such as Maurenbrecher have done good service, particularly as regards the more secular side of Luther’s picture. The historian Onno Klopp was still a Protestant when, in 1857, in his “Katholizismus, Protestantismus und Gewissensfreiheit in Deutschland,” albeit recognising Luther’s merits, he censured his “boundless confidence in the infallibility of his own judgment”; the “unstable character of the new Church, so dependent on the favour of princes”; also the blind, idolatrous veneration of his followers for him, especially the attitude of the “narrow-minded Elector and his advisers who were ready to take all the morbid drivel of a quarrelsome old man for the Word of God.” And these same authorities, so Onno Klopp declares, set up a new “Protestant Cæsarean Popedom” which year by year became more burdensome and oppressive. On the whole his portrait of Luther is the reverse of flattering.

  Had the writings of Leopold von Ranke and Carl Adolf Menzel been as independent as Maurenbrecher’s or as broad-minded as Klopp’s, their picture of Luther would have been more true. Even to-day, in spite of the abundance of works on the Reformation period, an independent historian at home in all the profound and detailed studies which have recently appeared, is still lacking in Protestant circles; hence a living picture of Luther’s person has not yet been painted.

  As for the Protestant theologians they have, as a rule, not contributed much to the portrait of Luther; what they have given us has been rather a sort of kaleidoscope of Luther’s dogma; they busy themselves more with crumbs from his history than with it as a whole. Dealing with some particular doctrine, writing or action of his they have sketched, so to speak, only one facet of his personality; with the help of this they have, nevertheless, built up a picture of the founder of Protestantism as he seemed to them. Hence even the fundamental conception of Luther’s message, i.e. that whereby it differs essentially from Catholicism has been very variously estimated.

  Protestant theologians of more “positive” leanings have protested against the Rationalist views of those other theologians who hold that Luther banished dogma from his Christianity, and rediscovered Christianity “as a religion.” They declare that, not only did he not abrogate dogma but that he actually “revived and preserved” it. A religion without dogma was unthinkable to him.

  It is true that these positive theologians who believe in the existence of Lutheran “dogmas” are at variance when it comes to stating clearly the actual dogmas which Luther “revived,” or in what his essential message consisted. Some insist above all on the ethical side; thanks to Luther there came a “deeper understanding for the idiosyncracies of the individual” than was the rule in mediæval Christianity.

  Where such inveterate differences of opinion prevailed even the theology of conciliation was bound to fail. Reinhold Seeberg, the Berlin theologian, tried to promote some sort of settlement in his “Grundwahrheiten der christlichen Religion,” a work “framed on the lines of the olden Gospel and in the spirit of Paul and Luther which seeks to make the Christian standpoint understood in wider circles.” But his scheme met with a poor reception; the more orthodox looked at it “askance, and, on the other hand, the progressive party were only the more confirmed in their antagonism.”

  Several Protestant theologians of late years have compared Luther to St. Paul. This, for instance, was also done by Walter Köhler of Zürich, a liberal theologian, who does not hesitate to reprehend in Luther whatever he finds amiss, and who also shows considerably more broad-mindedness than many others in his appreciation of the works of Catholics.

  The Janus-Picture of the Mediæval and Modern Luther

  Thanks to Denifle’s work Luther’s relation to the Middle Ages is now more clearly seen. The need for bestowing more attention than has hitherto been done on that side of Luther’s picture which belongs to the Middle Ages has been strongly insisted on by another liberal theo
logian, viz. Ernst Troeltsch of Heidelberg. In Troeltsch’s writings Luther’s features become to a great extent mediæval. His views on grace and faith, his ethics, his Churches, the stress he lays on the Word — all this, in reality, is an echo of Catholic times. All that forms the very being of Luther is mediæval and the Protestant traits are merely the wrapping. With the belief in revelation, which he still retained, he had been unable to rise above the hedge of the mediæval way of thought.

  Troeltsch thus comes to the conclusion that the new era in which we live did not commence with Luther but only some two centuries ago, i.e. with the dawn of the Enlightenment. The older Protestantism, no less than Luther himself, belongs to the Middle Ages. Luther stuck fast in the Middle Ages chiefly because he clung to the belief in the “supranatural,” whereas the modern world, thanks to a mathematico-mechanical natural science, has done away with all that stands above nature.

  Troeltsch also points out that Luther traces his conception of the Evangel back to Paul, and not to Jesus as the New Theology does; also that he, like the earlier Protestantism, had not completely shaken himself free of the mediæval asceticism, and that he held fast to the traditional doctrine of an original sin.

  A Catholic writer has expressed himself more correctly on Luther’s false “supranaturalism,” according to which God does everything and man nothing: “The innermost kernel of his doctrinal system was more ultra-mediæval than the Middle Ages themselves.” “So far was he from desiring to make religion less unworldly or less Christian, that, according to what he was incessantly hammering into his hearers, man was to live himself ever more and more into conscience and faith, into Christ and the Gospel.”

  Nevertheless the objection brought forward repeatedly of recent years against the theory of Luther’s mediævalism is also worthy of note; it is urged that, particularly in the early years of his tempestuous struggle, he threw off ideas which stamp him as thoroughly modern.