LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
which is bitterly to be deplored.... In place of this they entangle themselves in philosophical questions and in disputes which merely pander to their cleverness, in doubtful interpretations, dangerous doctrines and the rest.”[313] But “with the prevalent spirit of formalism and disorder, embodied chiefly in Nominalism,” “a healthy and at the same time fruitful treatment of Holy Scripture had become impossible.... These were abuses which had long been calling for the reintroduction of a positive and more scriptural treatment of theology.”[314] Though the judgment passed by Luther in his later years on the neglect of Holy Scripture was somewhat too general (for it was historically untrue to say that Scripture had ever been altogether given up by the Church),[315] yet contemporaries agree with him in blaming the too extensive use of Aristotle’s philosophy in the schools to the detriment of the Bible-text. Long before, Gerson, whose books were in Luther’s hands, had laid stress on the importance of Holy Scripture for theology. “Holy Scripture,” he says, “is a Rule of Faith, which it is only necessary to understand aright; against it there is no appeal to authority or to the decisions of human reason: nor can custom, law or practice have any weight if proved to be contrary to Holy Scripture.”[316]
Luther, with palpable exaggeration, lays the charge at the door of theology as a whole, even of the earlier school, and would have us believe that the abuse was inseparable from ecclesiastical science. He speaks to this effect more and more forcibly during the course of his controversies. Thus in 1530 he says of the Scholastics, that they “despised Holy Scripture.” “What! they exclaimed, the Bible? Why, the Bible is a heretic’s book, and you need only read the Doctors to find that out. I know that I am not lying in saying this, for I grew up amongst them and saw and heard all about them.” And so they had arrived at doctrines about which one must ask: “Is this the way to honour Christ’s blood and death?” Everything was full of “idle doctrines which did not agree among themselves, and strange new opinions.”[317] Occam, he declares in his Table-Talk in 1540, “excelled them all in genius and has confuted all the other schools, but even he said and wrote in so many words that it could not be proved from Scripture that the Holy Ghost is necessary for a good work.”[318] “These people had intelligence, had time for work and had grown grey in study, but about Christ they understood nothing, because they esteemed Holy Scripture lightly. No one read the Bible so as to steep himself in its contents with reflection, it was only treated like a history book.[319]
It is true that the scholastic treatment of the doctrines of faith, as advocated by Occam against the more positive school, disregarded Holy Scripture to such an extent that, in the master’s subtle Commentaries, it hardly finds any place; even in the treatment of the supernatural virtues—faith, hope and charity—Scripture scarcely intervenes.[320] But it was unjust of Luther, on this account, to speak of the Schoolmen’s contempt for the Bible, or to say, for instance in his Table-Talk, about his master, Gabriel Biel, whose Commentary on the Sentences had become, so to speak, a hand-book: “The authority of the Bible counted for nothing with Gabriel.”[321] Biel esteemed and utilised the Bible as the true Word of God, but he did not satisfy young Luther, who desiderated in him much more of the Bible and a little less of philosophy. The “word,” he declares, was not cherished by the priests, and this he had already shown in his Leitzkau discourse to be the reason of all the corruption.[322]
The preponderance of philosophy, and more particularly the excessive authority of Aristotle, in the theological method of his circle offered Luther a second point of attack. Here also it was a question of a rather widely spread abuse which the better class of Schoolmen had prudently avoided. The Nominalistic schools, generally speaking, showed a tendency to a rationalistic treatment of the truths of faith, which affrighted Luther considerably. General ideas, according to the Nominalists, were merely “nomina,” i.e. empty words; Nominalists concerned themselves only with what was actual and tangible. Nominalism was fond of displaying its dialectic and even its insolence at the expense of theology on the despised Universal ideas. We can understand the invective with which Luther gives expression to his hatred of Scholasticism, though his right to do so arose only from his limited acquaintance with those few Scholastics whom he had chosen,[323] or, rather, who had been allotted to him, as his masters; the schools he attended were at that time all following the method of the Nominalists, then usually known as “modern.”
Already, in 1509 (see above, p. 22), a severe criticism of Aristotle appears in Luther’s marginal notes. This is in a gloss on Augustine’s work “On the City of God” which he was then devouring as a sort of antidote: “Far more apparent is the error of our theologians when they impudently chatter (‘impudentissime garriunt’) and affirm of Aristotle that he does not deviate from Catholic truth.”[324]
Luther’s later exaggerations need not be refuted, in which he complains so loudly of the idolatrous Aristotelian worship of reason on the part of all the Scholastics. It was in general perfectly well known regarding Aristotle that he had erred, and also where he erred; books had even been written dealing with his deviations from the faith. This, however, did not prevent many from over-estimating him. We must set against this, however, the fact that Luther’s own professor of philosophy in the University of Erfurt, Bartholomew Arnoldi of Usingen, had declared, like others before him, that those who represented the Stagirite as without errors were “not worthy of the name of philosophers, for they were not lovers of the truth but mocked at philosophy; they should just read their hero more carefully and they would find that, for instance, he made out the world to be without any beginning, a view which Moses, the prophet of truth, had shown to be an error; Scotus, too, wrote in the first book of his Commentary on the Sentences, that the works of Aristotle were more in agreement with the law of Mohammed than with that of Christ.”[325] Usingen was an earnest and moderate man, who did not shrink, even in his philosophical writings, from preferring Divine Revelation to the exaggeration of the rights of reason. “The inadequacy of philosophers is as apparent as the great value of the Sacred Books. The latter rise far above the knowledge attained by mere human reason and natural light.”[326] Owing to the fact that he had made no secret of his views in his intercourse with Luther, especially when they became more intimate on Luther’s entering the Order to which he himself belonged,[327] we can understand and explain the sympathy and respect with which Luther long after cherished his memory, though the path he followed was no longer that of his old teacher. Usingen was a Nominalist, but his example shows that there were some enlightened men who belonged to this school, and who did it honour.
In the course of time, regardless of the numerous examples giving him the lie, Luther came ruthlessly to condemn all the Schoolmen and the whole Middle Ages ostensibly on the ground of the pretended poisoning of the faith by Aristotle, but really because he himself had set up a contradiction between faith and reason.[328] He says in 1521 that the Scholastics, headed by Aquinas, “solus aristotelicissimus ac plane Aristoteles ipse,” had smuggled philosophy into the world, though the Apostle had condemned it; thus it became too powerful, made Aristotle equal to Christ in dignity and trustworthiness, and darkened for us the Sun of righteousness and truth, the Son of God.[329]