LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
While taking the acceptance of the whole of revelation for granted, he magnifies fiducial faith to such an extent, that many Protestant theologians have come to consider a trusting faith in Christ to be his only essential requirement, in fact to imagine that in this alone faith consists; claiming to be merely following Luther, they deny that the acceptance of individual points of faith, i.e. Articles of Faith, can be a necessary condition for salvation.
Fiducial faith, with its assurance of salvation was the way which Luther discovered out of all his troubles about two years after the termination of his Commentary on Romans, in 1518, or the beginning of 1519. This discovery is a remarkable event, which stands alone, and with which we must concern ourselves after first examining what led up to it. From the place where it was made, viz. the tower belonging to the monastery, it might be styled the Tower Experience.
The incident remained imbedded in Luther’s mind till his old age; he frequently alludes to it, and though in some of its details his memory did not serve him aright and his apprehension of it may have been somewhat modified by party prejudice, yet the main elements of the story appear to be historically quite credible. He fixes not merely the place, but also the time of the incident, namely, the commencement of his second course of lectures on the Psalms (1518-19), i.e. two matters which ever serve as the most reliable framework for the picture of an event long past. From what he relates between 1532 and 1545, one thing is directly certain regarding this purely spiritual, and for that reason rather less tangible incident, viz. that it was an experience arrived at only after the acutest mental anguish and which Luther ever after regarded as a special illumination vouchsafed to him by God. It is connected with Romans i. 17: “For the justice of God is revealed therein [in the Gospel] from faith unto faith as it is written [Hab. ii. 4]: ‘The just man liveth by faith.’”
What is indirectly no less certain, from the unanimity of the testimonies, and from the course of his development as vouched for by his writings, is that the discovery in question was really that of the assurance of salvation.
The various opinions which have been expressed on the account of the event given by Luther (see below, p. 388 ff.) in 1545, and the numerous attempts which have been made to fix a date for the same, render it necessary to trace chronologically the development of the doctrine of faith and salvation in Luther’s mind till the year 1519. We shall see that his statement as to the time when the event took place (1518-19) not only presents no difficulty, but that such a termination to his experiences was naturally to be expected.
Prior to 1518-19 the absolute assurance of salvation which appears afterwards is nowhere distinctly expressed in Luther’s doctrine on faith and salvation.
Passages to the contrary, which have been quoted from the imprinted lectures on Hebrews delivered previous to the autumn of 1517, need not be interpreted in the sense of fiducial faith and assurance of salvation. They refer rather indistinctly to the effects of faith without the works which Luther had now come to detest, and attack “self-righteousness,” as in the Commentary on Romans (“sola fides ... quæ non nititur operibus illis [orationibus et præparatoriis”]). They only hint vaguely at the road he will follow later.[965]
Again, in the Indulgence theses of October 31, 1517, directed against Tetzel, the assurance of salvation is not expressed, and we find a recommendation “to trust rather to enter heaven by much tribulation than by security and peace.” In place of pax, pax! he, as a mystic, would prefer to exhort the people with the cry: crux, crux! (thesis 93).
Neither do the theses of the Heidelberg Disputation in April, 1518, contain the assurance of salvation, although theses 25-8 touch upon justification and, as against the law, extol the great effects of the faith which Christ works in us.[966]
On the other hand, the Resolutions to the Indulgence theses which appeared shortly after (1518) treat to a certain extent of the subject and attempt to give a solution.[967] There we read: “In the confusion [in the mind of the man who is perturbed by thoughts of sin and rejection] God works a strange work in order to accomplish His work”; grace is infused (“infunditur gratia”), while man still fancies he “is about to be damned.” In order to rid himself of his “despair,” he goes to Confession “so that the priest may declare him absolved and give peace to his conscience.” “The man who is to be absolved must take great care lest he doubt the remission of his sins.” Faith in Christ’s words to Peter: “Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth,” etc., does all. The whole passage, which describes justification in the fanciful and paradoxical language of the mystic, is worth quoting: “When God begins to justify a man, He first damns him; He is about to build, but first He pulls down, to heal but first He deals wounds, to vivify but first He condemns to death. He crushes a man, humbles him by the knowledge of himself and his sins and makes him tremble, so that, under a sense of his misery, he cries out [with Holy Scripture] ‘there is no peace for my bones because of my sins, there is no health in my flesh because of Thy wrath. For the mountains melt away before the face of God, He sends out His arrows, He troubles us with His anger and with the breath of His wrath. The sinner sinks down into hell and shame covers his face. David frequently experienced this confusion and tribulation and describes it with sighs in several of the Psalms. Salvation has its origin in this confusion, because ‘the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.’” The ways of God are in a tempest and a whirlwind, according to Nahum (i. 3); man’s destruction is to Him “the most pleasing sacrifice,” the animal sacrificed is torn in pieces, the hide is stripped off, and it is slaughtered. Luther in three passages from the Prophets, describes the “infusion of grace,” which man is apt to mistake for the outpouring of the Divine wrath upon him.
Because the man who is justified is still “without peace and consolation,” not trusting his own judgment, he begs the priest for comfort in Confession. “He is led to cling to the judgment of another not because he is a spiritual superior, or because he possesses any power, but on account of the words of Christ Who cannot lie: ‘Whatsoever thou shalt loose,’ etc. Faith in these words has worked peace of conscience while the priest looses by virtue of the same.”[968] “Christ is our peace. Without faith in His word, no one will ever be at peace even after more than a thousand absolutions from the Pope. Thanks be to God for this sweet power of the priest.”
Such words of gratitude do not disguise the fact, that the sacrament of penance is stripped of its meaning by the assurance, that “the remission of guilt takes place by the infusion of grace before the priest has given absolution.”
Above all it is plain we have not yet here that assurance of salvation, as Luther held it at a later date:
“Whoever seeks peace in another way [than through the absolution of the priest],” he says in the same passage, “say, by his own inward experience, appears to be tempting God, and not seeking peace by faith.” With this denial of the validity of personal inward experience (“experientia intus”) he brushes aside an element which, scarcely a year later, he represents as essential. He says still more definitely: “The remission of guilt is not assured to us, as a general rule, except by the sentence of the priest, and not even by him unless we believe Christ’s promise with regard to loosing. But so long as we are not certain of the remission it is no remission.” “As the infusion of grace is hidden under the appearance of anger, man is still more uncertain of grace when it is present than when it is absent.”[969]
That Luther could rest satisfied with so shadowy and insufficient a conception can only be attributed to his state of mind at the time.
He lays great stress on absolution in the Disputation of the year 1518 “For the calming of troubled consciences” (above, p. 319).[970] Here it is expressly stated, that the strongest assurance regarding the state of grace is to be derived