LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
doctrine on freedom and autonomy have been clearly pointed out even by some of the more advanced Protestant theologians. Adolf Harnack, for instance, recently expressed the truth neatly when he said that “Kant and Fichte were both of them hidden behind Luther.”[81]
The second work “On the Babylonish Captivity,” with its sceptical tendency, of which, however, Luther was in great part unconscious, also vindicates this opinion.
The very arbitrariness with which the author questions facts of faith or usages dating from the earliest ages of the Church, must naturally have awakened in such of his readers as were already predisposed a spirit of criticism which bore a startling resemblance to the spirit of revolt. Here again, in one passage, Luther comes to the question of the right of placing private judgment in matters of religion above all authority. He here teaches that there exists in the assembly of the Faithful, and through the illumination of the Divine Spirit, a certain “interior sense for judging concerning doctrine, a sense, which, though it cannot be demonstrated, is nevertheless absolutely certain.” He describes faith, as it comes into being in every individual Christian soul, “as the result of a certitude directly inspired of God, a certitude of which he himself is conscious.”[82]
What this private judgment of each individual would lead to in Holy Scripture, Luther shows by his own example in this very work; he already makes a distinction based on the “interior sense” between the various books of the Bible, i.e. those stamped with the true Apostolic Spirit, and, for instance, the less trustworthy Epistle of St. James, of which the teaching contradicts his own. Köstlin, with a certain amount of reserve, admits: “This he gives us to understand, agreeably with his principles and experience; it is not our affair to prove that it is tenable or to vindicate it.”[83]
Luther says at the end of the passage in question: “Of this question more elsewhere.” As a matter of fact, however, he never did treat of it fully and in detail, although it concerned the fundamentals of religion; for this omission he certainly had reasons of his own.
A certain radicalism is perceptible in the work “On the Babylonish Captivity,” even with regard to social matters. Luther lays it down: “I say that no Pope or Bishop or any other man has a right to impose even one syllable upon a Christian man, except with his consent; any other course is pure tyranny.”[84] It is true that ostensibly he is only assailing the tyranny of ecclesiastical laws, yet, even so, he exceeds all reasonable limits.
With regard to marriage, the foundation of society, so unguarded is he, that, besides destroying its sacramental character, he brushes aside the ecclesiastical impediments of marriage as mere man-made inventions, and, speaking of divorce based on these laws, he declares that to him bigamy is preferable.[85] When a marriage is dissolved on account of adultery, he thinks remarriage allowable to the innocent party. He also expresses the fervent wish that the words of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians vii. 15, according to which the Christian man or woman deserted by an infidel spouse is thereby set free from the marriage tie, should also apply to the marriages of Christians where the one party has maliciously deserted the other; in such a case, the offending party is no better than an infidel. Regarding the impediment of impotence on the man’s part, he conceives the idea[86] that the wife might, without any decision of the court, “live secretly with her husband’s brother, or with some other man.”[87] In the later editions of Luther’s works this statement, as well as that concerning bigamy, has been suppressed.
Luther, so he says, is loath to decide anything. But neither are popes or bishops to give decisions! “If, however,” says Luther, “two well-instructed and worthy men were to agree in Christ’s name, and speak according to the spirit of Christ, then I would prefer their judgment before all the Councils, which are now only looked up to on account of the number and outward reputation of the people there assembled, no regard being paid to their learning and holiness.”[88] Apart from other objections, the stipulation concerning the “Spirit of Christ,” here made by the mystic, renders his plan illusory, for who is to determine that the “Spirit of Christ” is present in the judgment of the two “well-instructed men”? Luther seems to assume that this determination is an easy matter. First and foremost, who is to decide whether these men are really well-instructed? There were many whose opinion differed from Luther’s, and who thought that this and such-like demands, made in his tract “On the Babylonish Captivity,” opened the door to a real confusion of Babel.
Neither can the work “On the Freedom of a Christian Man” be absolved from a certain dangerous radicalism. A false spirit of liberty in the domain of faith breathes through it. The faith which is here extolled is not faith in the olden and true meaning of the word, namely the submission of reason to what God has revealed and proposes for belief through the authority He Himself instituted, but faith in the Lutheran sense, i.e. personal trust in Christ and in the salvation He offers. Faith in the whole supernatural body of Christian truth comes here so little into account that it is reduced to the mere assurance of salvation. All that we are told is that the Christian is “free and has power over all” by a simple appropriation of the merits of Christ; he is purified by the mere acceptance of the merciful love revealed in Christ; “this faith suffices him,” and through it he enjoys all the riches of God. And this so-called faith is mainly a matter of feeling; a man must learn to “taste the true spirit of interior trials,” just as the author himself, so he says, “in his great temptations had been permitted to taste a few drops of faith.”[89] Faith is thus not only robbed of its true meaning and made into a mere personal assurance, but the assurance appears as something really not so easy of attainment, since it is only to be arrived at by treading the difficult path of spiritual suffering.
Luther thereby strikes a blow at one of the most vital points of positive religion, viz. the idea of faith.
The author, in this same work,[90] again reminds us that by faith all are priests, and therefore have the right “to instruct Christians concerning the faith and the freedom of believers”; for the preservation of order, however, all cannot teach, and therefore some are chosen from amongst the rest for this purpose. It is plain how, by this means, a door was opened to the introduction of diversity of doctrine and the ruin of the treasure of revelation.
The religious tone which Luther assumed in the work “On the Freedom of a Christian Man,” and his earnestness and feeling, made his readers more ready to overlook the perils for real religion which it involved. This consideration brings us to the other characteristic, viz. the pietism which, as stated above, is so strangely combined in the three works with intense radicalism.
The religious feeling which pervades every page of the “Freedom of a Christian Man” is, if anything, overdone. In what Luther there says we see the outpourings of one whose religious views are quite peculiar, and who is bent on bringing the Christian people to see things in the same light as he does; deeply imbued as he is with his idea of salvation by faith alone, and full of bitterness against the alleged disfiguring of the Church’s life by meritorious works, he depicts his own conception of religion in vivid and attractive colours, and in the finest language of the mystics. It is easy to understand how so many Protestant writers have been fascinated by these pages, indeed, the best ascetic writers might well envy him certain of the passages in which he speaks of the person of Christ and of communion with Him. Nevertheless, a fault which runs through the whole work is, as already explained, his tendency to narrow the horizon of religious thought and feeling by making the end of everything to consist in the mere awakening of trust in Christ as our Saviour. Ultimately, religion to him means no more than this confidence; he is even anxious to exclude so well-founded and fruitful a spiritual exercise as compassion with the sufferings of our crucified Redeemer, actually calling it “childish and effeminate stupidity.”[91] How much more profound and fruitful was the religious sentiment of the genuine mystics of the Church, whom the contemplation of the sufferings of Christ furnished with the most beautiful and touching subject of meditation, and who knew how to find a source of edification in all the truths of faith, and not only in that of the forgiveness of sins. Writers such as they, described to their pious readers in far greater detail the person of Christ, the honour given by Him to God and the virtues He had inculcated.
The booklet “To the Nobility,” likewise, particularly in the Preface, throws a strange sidelight on the pietism of the so-called great