LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
me,” he says, “i.e. penetrate me with faith, because the just man lives by faith; faith is our life.”[151]
Even at that time he was not averse to dwelling on the strength of concupiscence and, in his usual hyperbolical style, he lays stress on the weakness and wickedness of human nature. “We are all a lost lump”;[152] “whoever is without God sins necessarily, i.e. he is in sin”;[153] “unconquerable” or “necessary” are terms he is fond of applying to concupiscence in his discourses.[154] From other passages it would almost appear as if, even then, he admitted the persistence of original sin, even after baptism; for instance, he says that the whole world is “in peccatis originalibus,” though unaware of it, and must therefore cry “mea culpa”;[155] our righteousness is nothing but sin;[156] understanding, will, and memory, even in the baptised, are all fallen, and, like the wounded Jew, await the coming of the Samaritan.[157] He also speaks of the imputation of righteousness by God who, instead of attributing to us our sins, “imputes [the merits of Christ] unto our righteousness.”[158]
Still, taken in their context, none of these passages furnish any decisive proof of a deviation from the Church’s faith. They forebode, indeed, Luther’s later errors, but contain as yet no explicit denial of Catholic doctrine. In this we must subscribe to Denifle’s view, and admit that no teaching actually heretical is found in the Commentary on the Psalms.[159]
With reference to man’s natural powers, that cardinal point of Luther’s later teaching, neither the ability to be good and pleasing to God, nor the freedom of choosing what is right and good in spite of concupiscence, is denied.[160] Concupiscence, as he frequently admonishes us, must be driven back, “it must not be allowed the mastery,” though it will always make itself felt; it is like a Red Sea through the midst of which we must pass, refusing our consent to the temptations which press upon us like an advancing tide.[161] Luther lays great weight on the so-called Syntheresis, the inner voice which, according to the explanation of the schoolmen, he believes cries longingly to God, by whom also it is heard; it is the ineradicable precious remnant of good left in us,[162] and upon which grace acts. Man’s salvation is in his own hands inasmuch as he is able either to accept or to reject the law of God.[163] Luther also speaks of a preparation for grace (“dispositio et præparatio”) which God’s preventing, supernatural grace assists.[164] He expressly invokes the traditional theological axiom that “God’s grace is vouchsafed to everyone who does his part.”[165] He even teaches, following Occam’s school, that such self-preparation constitutes a merit “de congruo.”[166] He speaks as a Catholic of the doctrine of merit, admits the so-called thesaurus meritorum from which indulgences derive their efficacy, and, without taking offence, alludes to satisfaction (satisfactio operis),”[167] to works of supererogation,[168] as also to the place of purification in the next world (purgatorium).[169]
Regarding God’s imputing of righteousness he follows, it is true, the Occamist doctrine, and on this subject the following words are the most interesting: faith and grace by which we to-day (i.e. in the present order of things) are justified, would not justify without the intervention of the pactum Dei; i.e. of God’s mercy, who has so ordained it, but who might have ordained otherwise.[170] Friedrich Loofs rightly says regarding imputation in the Commentary on the Psalms: “It must be noted that the reputari iustum, i.e. the being-declared-justified, is not considered by Luther as the reverse of making righteous; on the contrary, the sine merito iustificari in the sense of absolvi is at the same time the beginning of a new life.”[171] “The faith,” so A. Hunzinger opines of the passages in question in the same work, “is as yet no imputative faith,” i.e. not in the later Lutheran sense.[172]
The Protestant scholar last mentioned has dissected the Commentary on the Psalms in detail; particularly did he examine its connection with the philosophical and mystical system sometimes designated as Augustinian Neo-Platonism.[173] It may be left an open question whether his complicated researches have succeeded in proving that in the Commentary—interpreted in the light of some of the older sermons and the marginal glosses in the Zwickau books—Luther’s teaching resolves itself into a “somewhat loose and contradictory mixture of four elements,” namely, Augustinian Neo-Platonism, an Augustinian doctrine on sin and grace, a trace of scholastic theology, and some of the mysticism of St. Bernard.[174] His researches and his comparison of many passages in the Commentary on the Psalms with the works of Augustine, especially with the “Soliloquia” and the book “De vera religione,” have certainly shown that Luther was indebted for his expressions and to a certain extent for his line of thought, to those works of Augustine with which he was then acquainted. He had probably been attracted by the mystical tendency of these writings, by that reflection of Platonism, which, however, neither in St. Augustine’s nor in Luther’s case, as Hunzinger himself admits, involved any real acceptance of the erroneous ideas of the heathen Neo-Platonism. Luther was weary of the dry Scholasticism he had learned at the schools and greedily absorbed the theology of the Bishop of Hippo, which appealed far more to him, though his previous studies had been insufficient to equip him for its proper understanding. His own words in 1532 express his case fairly accurately. He says: “In the beginning I devoured rather than read Augustine.”[175] In a marginal note on the Sentences of Peter Lombard he speaks, in 1509, of this Doctor as “numquam satis laudatus,” like him, he, too, would fain send the “moderni” and that “fabulator Aristoteles” about their business.[176]
The obscure and tangled mysticism which the young author of the Commentary on the Psalms built up on Augustine—whose spirit was far more profound than Luther’s—the smattering of Augustinian theology, altered to suit his controversial purposes, with which he supplemented his own scholastic, or rather Occamistic, theology, and the needless length of the work, make his Commentary into an unattractive congeries of moral, philosophical and theological thoughts, undigested, disconnected and sometimes unintelligible. Various causes contributed to this tangle, not the least being the nature of the subject itself. Most of the Psalms present all sorts of ideas and figures, and give the theological and practical commentator opportunity to introduce whatever he pleases from the stores of his knowledge. With some truth Luther himself said of his work in a letter to Spalatin, dated December 26, 1515, that it was not worth printing, that it contained too much superficial matter, and deserved rather to