Life of Luther. Julius Köstlin
mediaeval Church, so addicted to externals, ascribed to outward acts and ordinances, he found the most devout absorption in the sentiments of real Christian religion. Instead of the barren, formal expositions and logical operations of the scholastic intellect, he found a striving and wrestling of the whole inner man, with all the mind and will, after direct communion and union with God, who Himself seeks to draw into this union the soul devoted to Him, and makes it become like to himself. Such a depth of contemplation and such fervour of a Christian mind Luther had not found even in an Augustine. He rejoiced to see this treasure written in his native German, and it certainly was the noblest German he had ever read. He felt himself marvellously impressed by this theology; he knew of no sermons, so he wrote to a friend, which agreed more faithfully with the gospel than those of Tauler. He published that tract—then not quite complete—in 1516, and again afterwards in 1518. It was the first publication from his hand. His further sermons and writings show how deeply he was imbued with its contents. The influences he here received had a lasting effect on the formation of his inner life and his theology.
With regard to sin, he now learned that its deepest roots and fundamental character lay in our own wills, in self-love and selfishness. To enjoy communion with God it is necessary that the heart should put away all worldliness, and let its natural will be dead, so that God alone may live and work in us. So, as he says on the title-page of 'German Theology,' shall Adam die in us and Christ be made alive. But the essential peculiarity of Luther's doctrine of salvation, grounded as it was directly on Scripture, still remained intact, despite the theology no less of the mystics than of Augustine, and, after passing through these influences, developed its full independence during his struggles as a Reformer. For this communion with God he never thought it necessary, as the mystics maintained, to renounce one's personality and retire altogether from the world and things temporal: a purely passive attitude towards God, and a blessedness consisting in such an attitude, was not his highest or ultimate ideal. A man's personality, he held, should only be destroyed so far as it resists the will of God, and dares to assert its self-righteousness and merits before Him. The road to real communion with God was always that 'short road' of faith, in which the contrite sinner, who feels his personality crushed by the consciousness of sin, grasps the hand of Divine mercy, and is lifted up by it and restored. Christ was manifested, as the mystics said with Scripture, in order that the man's personality should die with Him, and imitate Him in self-renunciation. But the faith, on which Luther insisted, saw in Christ above all the Saviour who has died for us, and who pleads for us before God with His holy life and conduct, that the faithful may obtain through Him reconciliation and salvation. What the Saviour is to us in this respect Luther has thus summarised in words of his own: 'Lord Jesus,' he says, 'Thou hast taken to Thyself what is mine, and given to me what is Thine.' The main divergence between Luther and the German mysticism of the middle ages consists primarily in a different estimate of the general relations between God and the moral personality of man. With the mystics, behind the Christian and religious, lay a metaphysical conception of God, as a Being of absolute power, superior to all destiny, apparently rich in attributes, but in reality an empty Abstraction—above all, a Being who suffers nothing finite to exist in independence of Himself. With Luther the fundamental conception of God remained this, that He is the perfect Good, and that, in His perfect holiness, He is Love. This is the God by whom the sinner who has faith is restored and justified. From this conception as a starting-point, Luther acquired fresh strength and energy for advancing in the fight, whilst the pious mystic remained passively and quietly behind. From this also he learned to realise Christian liberty and moral duty in regard to daily life and its vocations, whilst the mystics remained shut off altogether from the world. The intimate connection between the conclusions to which the views of Tauler tended, and the principles from which Luther started, is shown further by the superior attraction which those sermons, so warmly recommended by Luther, continued to exercise upon members of the Evangelical, compared with those of the Catholic Church.
What Christ has suffered and done for us, and how we gain through Him the righteousness of God, peace, and real life—these thoughts of practical religion pervaded now all Luther's discourses. To the saving knowledge of these facts he endeavoured to direct his lectures, and discarded the dogmatical inquiries and subtle investigations and speculations of School-theology. At first, and even in his sermons at the convent, he had employed in his exposition of Biblical truths, as was the custom of learned preachers, philosophical expressions and references to Aristotle and famous Scholastics. But latterly, and at the time we are speaking of, he had entirely left this off; and, as regards the form of his sermons, instead of a stiff, logical construction of sentences, he employed that simple, lively, powerful eloquence which distinguished him above all preachers of his time. In 1516 and 1517 he delivered a course of sermons on the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer before his town congregation, with the view of showing the connection of the truths of Christian religion. He further had printed in 1517, for Christian readers generally, an explanation of the seven penitential psalms. He wished, as the title stated, to expound them thoroughly in their Scriptural meaning, for setting forth the grace of Christ and God, and enabling true self-knowledge. It is the first of his writings, published by himself, and in the German language, which we possess; for the later lectures that were published were delivered by him in Latin, and the first sermons we have of his were also written by him in that language. We give here the title and preface from the original print.
[Illustration: FIG. 6—Title and Preface of Penitential Psalms.]
Luther had now become possessed with a burning desire to refute, by means of the truth he had newly learned, the teaching and system of that School-theology on which he himself had wasted so much time and labour, and by which he saw that same truth darkened and obstructed. He first attacked Aristotle, the heathen philosopher from whom this theology, he said, received its empty and perverted formalism, whose system of physics was worthless, and who, especially in his conception of moral life and moral good, was blind, since he knew nothing of the essence and ground of true righteousness. The Scholastics, as Luther himself remarked against them, had failed signally to understand the genuine original philosophy of Aristotle. But the real greatness and significance which must be allowed to that philosophy, in the development of human thought and knowledge, were far removed from those profound questions of Christian morality and religion which engrossed Luther's mind, and from those truths to which he again had to testify. In theses which formed the subject of disputation among his followers, Luther expressed with particular acuteness his own doctrine, and that of Augustine, concerning the inability of man, and the grace of God, and his opposition to the previously dominant Schoolmen and their Aristotle. He was anxious also to hear the verdict of others, particularly of his teacher Trutvetter, upon his new polemics.
He already could boast that, at Wittenberg, his, or as he called it, the Augustinian theology, had found its way to victory. It was adopted by the theologians who had taught there, though wholly in the old Scholastic fashion, before him, especially by Carlstadt, who soon strove to outbid him in this new direction, and who, later on, in his own zeal for reform, fell into disputes with the great Reformer himself, and also by Nicholas von Amsdorf, whom we shall see afterwards at Luther's side as his personal friend and strongest supporter. At Erfurt, Luther's former convent, his friend and sympathiser Lange was now prior, having returned thither from Wittenberg, where indeed his former teachers could not yet accommodate themselves to his new ways. Of great importance to Luther's work and position was his friendship with George Spalatin (properly Burkardt of Spelt), the court preacher and private secretary of the Elector Frederick, a conscientious, clear-minded theologian, and a man of varied culture and calm, thoughtful judgment. He was of the same age as Luther; he had been with him at Erfurt as a fellow-student, and at Wittenberg afterwards, whither he came as tutor to the prince, and had remained on terms of intimacy with him. To Luther he proved an upright, warmhearted friend, and to the Elector a faithful and sagacious adviser. It was mainly due to his influence that the Elector showed such continued favour to Luther, marks of which he displayed by presents, such as that of a piece of richly-wrought cloth, which Luther thought almost too good for a monk's frock. Spalatin had also been a member of that circle of 'poets' at Erfurt; he kept up his connection with them, and corresponded with Erasmus, the head of the Humanists, and thus acted as a medium of communication for Luther in this quarter. Elsewhere in Germany we find the theology of Augustine or of St. Paul, as represented by Luther, taking root first among his friends