F. Loofs, for instance, says: “His leading ideas include in them a whole series of inferences which, however, he never followed up to their logical conclusion.… I may mention Luther’s dislike for all bare historical and dogmatic belief, the tendency he had caught from Erasmus to criticise even the Canon, the distinction he adumbrated between the message of salvation or ‘Word of God’ and the actual written word of Scripture.… Semler, who has been styled the father of Rationalism, in his ‘Abhandlung vom freien Gebrauch des Kanons’ has not unjustly claimed Luther as a forerunner … moreover, the services rendered by Luther to the [liberal Protestant] theology of the 19th century in many of its varied schools of thought cannot easily be overlooked.”
In these remarks there is doubtless much truth, and there are facts which go to bear out the theory that Luther indeed stands in close relations to the modern spirit. There can be no doubt that, in Luther, we find mediæval and modern features combined. What is wanting is an organic connection between the two; as explained in the foregoing volumes it was only at the expense of flagrant contradictions that he took over certain elements from the past while rejecting others; that he took one step forward towards modern infidelity and another backwards. The ancient figure of Janus with one face looking forward into the future and the other back upon the past was harmonious, at least inasmuch as the two faces were depicted as separate. In Luther, however, the two faces are one, a fact which scarcely improves his physiognomy.
From the recent studies on Luther we can now see more clearly than before that a “revision of the whole conception and appreciation of Luther” is imperative in his own household. But, in view of all the work already done, “is it not high time for us to expect an estimate of the Reformation as a whole which shall also be just to the whole Luther?” Stephan, who asks this question, answers it as follows: “We are still to-day in the midst of a new development that started more than a century since from the contrast presented by the different schools of thought.”
The “Religious” Reformer and the Hero of “Kultur”
Two other conceptions are in vogue at the present day, which are in part a reaction against the rather over-bold assertions sometimes made about Luther’s mediævalism. Some have insisted that Luther is to be taken as a “religious” teacher, without examining his actual doctrines too narrowly. To others he appears in the light of the founder of modern “Kultur,” i.e. of civilisation in its widest sense. Neither of these ideas can boast of being very clear, nor have they met with any great success.
Those who regard Luther merely as a religious teacher practically confine themselves to imputing to him the “religiousness” of modern Protestantism as the inward force which moved him; albeit, maybe, in his teaching, he did not quite come up to the modern standard. This was to all intents and purposes the view of Albert Ritschl and his school. Luther, they declared, taught first and foremost that both “piety and theology should rest on the consciousness of having in Christ a Gracious God, thanks to which consciousness we rise superior to the world with all its goods and all its duties.” With him “it was not a question of denominations but simply one of religion.” Ritschl, as another Protestant not unjustly observed, “undoubtedly fell a victim to the temptation” of “modernising” Luther. Moreover, whereas, according to Ritschl, one of Luther’s main achievements was his introduction of a new view of the Church as an institution devoid of legal jurisdiction, according to other Protestant scholars, it was “chiefly in his views regarding the Church that Luther remained under the spell of mediæval thought.” On the other hand, some few have sought to make out Luther’s religiousness to have been simply ethical. Thus Wilhelm Wundt, the philosopher, declared that Luther had taught mankind no new religion but only a new ethical system, which, however, was merely an offshoot of the Renaissance. As against this we may set the affirmation of Paul Wernle, viz. that neither Luther nor Lutheranism had a system of ethics at all.
Recently, it is true, Luther’s “religiousness” has been described by a skilful pen as consisting in an interior union with God, as something altogether “spiritual,” “personal,” as “a sentiment bringing comfort to man’s conscience.” The truth is, however, that the greatest minds, in mediæval and still more in patristic times, were also in favour of greater inwardness and were against that sort of righteousness which consists merely of words and works. This is a result borne in upon one by all the research now being conducted with so much vigour into the views prevalent in the Middle Ages and earlier.
Hence those who look upon Luther as a new preacher of religion are compelled to paint the pre-Lutheran world as absolutely heathen. Luther, “with his peasant’s pick, relentlessly attacked the vulgar polytheism of the people, the sublime polytheism of public worship and dogma, and likewise the pantheism of mysticism.” But, even if we suppose that all these dreadful things prevailed before Luther’s coming, what did he set up in their place? He induced people, so it is said, to “seek God and find Him in Jesus Christ the image of the fatherly heart of God, to fear, love and hope in God above all things, to fix our heart on God alone and there let it rest.” — But this was precisely what the olden mediæval Church had sought to do, hence, where is Luther’s peculiarity?
The state of the question to-day would almost seem to justify the words of the famous Ernst Moritz Arndt in his “Ansichten und Aussichten der teutschen Geschichte.” He wrote in 1814: “What Luther really taught and wished has hitherto been understood only by the few; his contemporaries failed to understand him, nor did he understand himself”; but “he foresaw that fiery, disembodied, formless Christianity that was to consist of nothing more than fire and spirit.” Arndt concludes with the solemn words: “But peace be with thine ashes, thou great German man, and may the earth hide thy shortcomings and Christian charity thy faults.”
The aim of other modern thinkers is to breathe new life into Luther by depicting him as the founder and the hero of modern “Kultur.” The conception of the author of Protestantism as the fount and origin of all present-day civilisation is certainly new and different from the earlier portraitures we have thus far considered. In this picture the “cultural” traits are put in so strong a light that his “religiousness” tends to vanish.
Modern civilisation is non-religious. It is perfectly true that Luther materially contributed to the expulsion of religious influences from the secular government and from public life in general; also that he intervened with a powerful hand to promote the secularisation — that had already begun — and to loosen the existing bond between the Church and the world. On the other hand, it is quite wrong to shut one’s eyes to the other powerful factors at work both before him and in his day which were also tending towards the civilisation of to-day with its estrangement from the Church and preponderance of material interests. Such a factor was the later Humanism. The whole background of the time in which he lived and the seething ferment that preceded the birth of the new world has been misunderstood. His friends indeed point to the after-effects of his undertaking as seen in the subsequent growth of education and scholarship; also to his attitude towards public morality; to the services he rendered to the German tongue; even to the benefit which, indirectly, accrued to agriculture, to the arts, to music, poetry, etc. But, even if we are disposed to allow that an improvement has taken place, it would be utterly unjust to blink the fact that many other spiritual and material influences were at work in all these spheres and were far more potent than Lutheranism. The Lutheran territories were still in a state of servitude and general backwardness when there passed over Germany a great wave of civilisation that was partly of German partly of foreign and even of Catholic growth. For the good that undoubtedly exists in modern civilisation we have to thank partly the natural sciences, which on their revival found a fertile soil even in Italy and France, partly commerce in which, however, the South of Europe was as active as any other region of the world, partly the arts, the best work being, however, cisalpine, partly the developmen
t of the State and the army, which again is certainly no indigenous product of Protestantism; hence what we now know is the result of a rivalry between varied influences and many countries. Then again all those qualities which to-day give Germany so high a place among the nations had existed in his countrymen long before Luther’s day; such were their readiness to appreciate the good in others, their openness to outside ideas, their ability to exploit foreign progress, their industry, their domesticity, their tenacity in overcoming all obstacles, and their sober outlook.
Those who make Luther the hero of “Kultur” are also apt to forget the sad ethical, social and political consequences of the schism. To these Adolf Harnack referred plainly enough in a lecture delivered in 1883: “We are well aware of what the Reformation cost us Germans and still costs us. For ages it delayed our political unity; it brought on us the Thirty Years’ War; it made it difficult for us to be just to the Church of the Middle Ages, nay, even to the Church of Antiquity — we cannot break with history without obscuring it — it brought upon us a religious schism which still hinders our growth.”
If, however, we examine those elements of the new “Kultur” which from the religious or moral standpoint are somewhat questionable (though, amongst Protestant unbelievers, writers are not wanting who are ready to justify them) we meet with many indications which lead us back to Luther. Yet, here again, on the other hand, there were other great and far-reaching causes at work which account for them, which have but little to do with Lutheranism. Such were, for instance, the English Deism which reached Germany by way of France and which helped to produce the infidelity of the Enlightenment; also the revolutionary ideas of 1789 on liberty, the Rights of Man and the lawfulness of rising in revolt, ideas to which the masses are still addicted; then again the luxury that was imported from abroad; above all the inclination of the human heart everywhere to sensuality, to egotism and to promote one’s own standing and temporal welfare even at the expense of one’s neighbour. These maladies to which human nature is prone have, by various causes, been sadly aggravated in modern times. How far Luther was responsible for some of these causes should not be difficult to determine after all that has been said above. At any rate his repudiation of authority in religious matters, his new ideas on faith and good works, and, again his whole system of subjectivism, were poor barriers against the inrush of those elements hostile to faith in God, to Christianity and to ethics, which, in modern civilisation, have a place side by side with much that is good.
Nietzsche laid it down that Luther was the first to free the German people from Christianity by teaching them to be un-Roman and to say: Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. He was anxious to make Luther the patron of his newest brand of “Kultur.” But this new, antichristian and atheistic “Kultur” is largely repudiated in Protestant circles. Many, like Walter Köhler, refuse to admit that Luther was in any sense the father of modern freethought; how could he have been, asks Köhler, since he would not sanction any freedom of conscience, and did not even understand what such a thing was?
Hence Luther makes a rather unsatisfactory “Hero of Kultur.” To depict him in this light his relations with the more favourable side of “Kultur” have to be so much exaggerated and distorted that one almost expects him, the sworn opponent of “fool reason” and champion of the “enslaved will,” to leap from his grave in protest; on the other hand, it is quite impossible to claim Luther as an advocate of that side of modern “Kultur” which is antagonistic to religion and morality. Protestant authorities have also protested against any claim being made on his behalf that he at least abolished that “Kultur which was directed by the Church”; on the contrary, so they declare, the “Kultur” for which he stood was in many respects “still tied up to the one and only Church” and was quite “mediæval in its character.” Thus, here again, a sort of dual picture, painted partly in the gay colours of the present day, partly in the sombre tints of the past.
A “Political” Luther? — Conclusion
Over and above all the previous presentations of Luther another strange portrait has recently appeared, which finds admirers among lay historians and students of political history. Here Luther’s political traits are emphasised. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, in his much-read work “Grundlagen des 19 Jahrhunderts,” insists on this view of Luther, starting from the assumption which is beyond question “that the separation from Rome for which Luther fought with such passion all his life was in itself the greatest political upheaval that could possibly occur.… However pitiful the later history of the Reformation may have been, still Luther’s deed was an undying one for this reason, that it rested on a firm political groundwork.” Chamberlain quite rightly makes much of Luther’s attempt to link his cause with that of the princes and with the German national sentiment.
“Without the princes,” says Chamberlain, “nothing could have been done. Who seriously believes that the princes who patronised the Reformation were inspired by or acted from religious enthusiasm? The fingers of one hand would be more than enough on which to reckon up those of whom such a thing holds good. Political interest and political ambition backed by the awakening of national sentiment were the determining factors.” “Even in the later wars of religion the political question was paramount.” It was his desire to win over the German statesmen that made Luther “speak so highly of the ‘German nation’ and so disrespectfully of the Papists.” That was why he wrote, for instance: “For my Germans was I born, them will I serve.” He is “more a politician than a theologian.” “Luther is, above all, a political hero.”
This portrait of the “political hero” is not one whit less one-sided than the others; above all, the author, who has no understanding for Christianity and the Church, fails also to see the so-called “religious” side in Luther. It is true that political motives often loomed so large in Luther’s case and in that of the princes who lent him their support as actually to obscure the religious side of the struggle. Luther himself, however, was anything rather than a great politician on the world’s stage. He had, in fact, to quote a Protestant historian, woefully distorted and imperfect views of the actual trend of human events, particularly of the determining personalities and active factors in the politics of that day. Never perhaps has a more childish diagnosis been given than that contained in the advice of the Wittenberg theologian to his sovereigns about their attitude towards Charles V. The circumstance that he was deficient in political sense may explain to some extent his mistakes and want of logic in this sphere, but cannot excuse the masterful tone in which he so often expresses himself on the public questions of the day. Then again there was his changeableness. Resistance to the Kaiser, which at one time he had declared unlawful, was advised by him later. After he had handed over the rights of the Church to the lawyers he turns on them and denounces them as his worst foes, who must be fought with every weapon for the sake of the independence of the preachers. In the same way, in spite of the religious freedom which he seemed at first to proclaim as a lasting principle for all future government of Church and State, we find him making his own that repellant intolerance, which, at last subsequent to 1530, led him to advocate the death-penalty for those who held “sectarian” doctrines, or any that differed from his own.
Discouraged by the failure of all these attempts to portray Luther others, at present, are inclined to deny him any mark of distinction and, in particular, any creative power, and depict him simply as the sum, or “product, of existing historical forces.” They emphasise strongly the pre-existing factors and regard him less as a mover than as one moved. This view, however, has also been stigmatised by Protestants as “Mythological.” They object that even “the masses also have a certain share in the achievements of genius,” and that genius itself is but “a child of its time.”
“The literary portraits of Luther,” says the Protestant author of “Luther im Lichte der neueren Forschung,” “are all more or less unlike the original. They are not in the strict sense of the word portrait
s at all but rather represent a type.… Every age has to some degree altered the traditional picture of the Reformer to make it fit its own ideals.” “The naïve way of idealising which credits the hero of history with our own ideals … is still at work even at the present day. If we cannot claim the whole Luther for ourselves, we can at least claim a bit of Luther.”
“In most of the popular Luther biographies of recent times,” the same author says, “all that is harsh and rude, violent and demagogic, rough and crude in the physiognomy of the Reformer has been obliterated.”
Adolf Harnack, also, seeks to discourage the practice of “hero painting”; he speaks unkindly of the common, “emotional pictures” of Luther as the reformer of civilisation which are fabricated somehow or other with the help of a select collection of artificial strokes. He adds: “The reformer himself would not recognise such a picture as his.” “Such a thing would be to him,” to quote an expression of Luther’s own, simply “a painted Luther.”
To get as close as possible to the real Luther and not to present a painted or fictitious one has been our constant endeavour in the present work. We venture to hope that the claims of objective history may be recognised even in a field which trenches so closely on religious convictions. There is so much that is purely historical and may be judged quite apart from denominational considerations, so much neutral ground where it is merely a question of facts. To construct an opinion of one’s own based on the incontrovertible facts is open to everyone. We trust that the new discussions that seem called for for a further sifting of facts will be undertaken in all calm and in the dispassionate temper befitting the historian. Should these volumes serve as a stimulus in this direction, the author will feel that, by this alone, he has achieved something great.
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