LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
in our heart; this, according to the same Father, is expressed in Romans iii. 28: “We hold that a man is justified by Faith without the works of the law.” Let Cardinal Cajetan, he says finally—after quoting a great number of biblical passages having no bearing on the matter in hand—show him how he is to understand in any other way all these texts from the Divine utterances.
What is remarkable is, however, that, during his trial at Augsburg, he allows Confession and Absolution to recede further into the background than in the Resolutions; he no longer speaks of the above-mentioned magical production of the personal assurance of salvation, by the formula of absolution, as by the testimony of another; he now holds the absolute certainty of justification to be present by faith even before this, whenever a man is willing to submit himself, according to his instructions, to the Sacrament of Penance.[975] Thus faith alone and the assurance of salvation were already present. The principal difficulty, however, as he admits below (p. 389 f.), still troubled his mind. This was the Justice of God, which haunted his conscience, though it did not hinder his going forward.
The appeal he made to a General Council in November and his “conjecture” of December, 1518, that the Pope might be Antichrist,[976] were momentous indications that he was cutting himself adrift from the authority of the Church. At the same time he stripped the ideas he had hitherto held on faith of everything that reminded him of the traditional teaching of the Church; he transformed the faith necessary for justification into a mere act of confidence in the merits of Christ without any reference to the Sacraments, to the other truths of faith, or to the Church, who is the guardian and mouthpiece of faith. To lay hold upon the righteousness of Christ with a sure trust is made to suffice for justification and for the fullest assurance of salvation, without any of the preliminaries and conditions on which he had formerly insisted. This act, too, God alone operates in man, who himself is devoid of all free will. Although he incidentally clothes the act of confidence with love, and even hints at the good works a man may have performed previous to this act, also requiring good resolutions for the future, yet these are only additions which are really inconsistent with his idea. Henceforward fiducial faith appears to him as really an isolated fact, an act of confidence inspired by God merely from His good pleasure and with no regard for any work. A vast change of far-reaching consequence had taken place in Luther’s conception of the appropriation of the iustitia Dei, he had now reached an interpretation of the words iustus ex fide vivit and of the whole meaning of the gospel, upon which, notwithstanding the independence of his treatment of doctrine, he had never hitherto ventured.
We may well ask what event, what development, had led up to this.
Salvation by faith alone and the absolute assurance of one’s state of grace, were taught by Luther quite openly in the second course of lectures on the Psalms, which he had commenced in 1518 (perhaps at the end of the year), and the beginning of which he published in 1519 with a preface addressed to the Elector Frederick, dated March 27, 1519 (see above, p. 285). This was the “Operationes in Psalmos,” upon the publication of which he was engaged until 1521, and which was finally left unfinished.
This work he, even at a later date, described as an entirely true exposition of his actual teaching on justification.[977]
Other lectures, delivered at an earlier period, received no such praise from him; on the contrary, he never took the trouble of having them printed, and does not even mention them. Although the Commentary on Romans, which we have already studied, had advanced a considerable distance along the new lines of thought, nevertheless, at a later date its tone appeared too Catholic to please him; it did not contain the new creed “Credo me esse salvum.” The same is true of the earlier course on the Psalms, of the lectures on Galatians, on Hebrews and on the Epistle to Titus. Luther, as a rule, was very ready to have his writings printed, but these, after he had entered upon the second stage of his development, he plainly looked upon as unripe and incomplete.
Simultaneously with the printing of the new Commentary on the Psalms he commenced that of another Commentary, also consisting of lectures. This is the shorter of the two works on Galatians which he has left us in print (above, p. 306 f.). This Commentary on Galatians, together with the “Operationes in Psalmos” is the earliest witness to his new and definitive conception of sola fides as an entire confidence in one’s justification.
To these must be added the almost contemporary “Sermo de triplici iustitia” delivered towards the end of 1518, and the “Sermo de duplici iustitia” dating from the commencement of 1519.
The righteousness of Christ, he says in the sermon on the threefold righteousness[978]—without any reference to the Sacraments, with the exception of Baptism, or to the Church’s means of grace—“is our whole being” and “becomes by faith our righteousness, according to Romans i.: ‘The just man liveth by faith’”; “Whoever has this shall not be damned, even though he commit sin,”[979] this being proved by two passages from the Psalms; “by this man becomes lord of all things.” There is no such thing as merit. “Every Christian must beware of ever doubting as to whether his works are pleasing to God; whoever doubts this, sins, loses all his works and labours in vain.... He is not acting from faith or in faith.” “As you believe in Christ so too you must believe that your works are well pleasing to God because they are of faith [i.e. done in a state of grace].”
In the sermon on the twofold righteousness one of the first quotations from the Bible on which the same idea is based and yet more strongly expressed is again Romans i. 17: “The justice of God is revealed in the gospel,” etc.[980] This passage assumes a more prominent position in his mind. He pauses in his explanation of Psalm xxx. 1: “In iustitia tua libera me”; this, he says, signifies “the righteousness of Christ which has become ours by faith, grace and the mercy of God.” He finds that this righteousness is frequently referred to in the Psalms as the “work of God, confession, power of God, mercy, truth and justice. These are all names for faith in Christ, or rather names for that righteousness which is in Christ.” It is true that “this alien righteousness which is only infused by grace is never completely infused all at once, but begins, increases and is finally completed by death.” It is displayed by works of faith, especially those for the good of others, where man, “the lord of all things,” makes himself “the servant of all”—words which Luther employs in exactly the same sense shortly afterwards as the foundation of his work: “On the freedom of a Christian man.” Faith, i.e. confidence in our own salvation by Christ, works all this; it imparts a certainty so that we are able to say: “Christ’s life, work, sufferings and death are mine, just as though I had myself lived, worked, suffered and died; so great is the confidence with which you are able to glory in Christ.”[981]
His teaching, even then, was against the law. According to him, says Loofs, “the law, even as ‘explained’ in the New Testament, which renders assurance of salvation possible only after the fulfilment of demands impossible to the natural man, is, it is true, necessary as a negative preparation for faith, though not to be regarded as the expression of the relationship desired by God between Himself and man. It is the gospel which teaches us the position which God wishes us to occupy with regard to Himself; according to its teaching we must, before we do anything for our salvation, be certain by faith of God’s forgiving grace, in order to be born again by such a faith and become capable of fulfilling the Will of God.”[982] The Protestant theologian who writes thus in his History of Dogma also points out that according to Luther, the law was merely revealed by God as an educational measure and as the foundation of a scale of rewards, whereas the gospel represents the justice of God in the order of grace (Rom. i. 17). “In this