LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
to the fundamental principle of true Scholasticism? Was Luther really ignorant of the theses which run through the whole of Scholasticism such as this of St. Thomas: “Donum gratiæ excedit omnem præparationem virtutis humanæ”?[363] The great lack of discrimination which underlies the above attack is characteristic of Luther in his youth and of his want of consideration in the standpoint he assumed. He starts from some justifiable objection to the nominalistic theology—which really was inadequate on the subject of the preparation for supernatural righteousness—sets up against it his own doctrine of fallen man and his salvation, and, then, without further ado, ascribes an absolutely fanciful idea of righteousness to the Church and the whole of Scholasticism. What he failed to distinguish, St. Thomas, Thomism, and all true Scholastics distinguished with very great clearness. Aquinas draws a sharp line of demarcation between the civil virtue of righteousness and the so-called infused righteousness of the act of justification. He anticipates, so to speak, Luther’s objection and his confusion of one idea with another, and teaches that by the repeated performance of exterior works an inward habit is without doubt formed in consequence of which man is better disposed to act rightly, as Aristotle teaches in his “Ethics”; “but,” he says, “this only holds good of human righteousness, by which man is disposed to what is humanly good (‘iustitia humana ad bonum humanum’); by human works the habit of such righteousness can be acquired. But the righteousness which counts in the eyes of God (i.e. supernatural righteousness) is ordained to the Divine good, namely, to future glory, which exceeds human strength (‘iustitia quæ habet gloriam apud Deum; ordinata ad bonum divinum’) ... wherefore man’s works are of no value for producing the habit of this righteousness, but the heart of man must first of all be inwardly justified by God, so that he may do the works which are of worth for eternal glory.”[364]
So speaks the most eminent of the Schoolmen in the name of the true theology of the Middle Ages.
For Luther, who brings forward the above arbitrary objection in his Commentary on Romans, it would have been very easy to have made use of the explanation just given, for it is found in St. Thomas’s Commentary on this very Epistle. Luther, one would have thought, would certainly have consulted this work for his interpretation of the Epistle, were it only on account of its historical interest, and even if it had not been the best work on the subject which had so far appeared. But no, it seems that he never looked into this Commentary, nor even into the older glosses of Peter Lombard on the Epistle to the Romans, then much in use; in the latter he would at once have found the refutation of the charge he brought against the Scholastics of advocating the doctrine of Aristotle on righteousness by works, as the gloss to the classic passage (Romans iii. 27) runs as follows: “For righteousness is not by works (‘non ex operibus est iustitia’), but works are the result of righteousness, and therefore we do not say: ‘the righteousness of works, but the works of righteousness.’”[365]
He does not even trouble to uphold the frivolous accusation that the Schoolmen had been acquainted only with Aristotelian righteousness, but actually refutes it by another objection. He finds fault with the “scholastic theologians” for having, as he says in the Commentary on Romans, “held the doctrine of the expulsion of sin and the infusion of grace” to be a single change.[366] He hereby admits that they were familiar with something more than mere Aristotelian righteousness, for in Aristotle there is certainly no question of any infusion of grace. But Luther frequently speaks in this way of the distinction which the Scholastics made between acquired and infused righteousness.
The changeableness and inconstancy of his assertions regarding the doctrines of the Scholastics is quite remarkable. He makes no difficulty about admitting later, against his previous statements, that the Scholastics did not teach that man was able to love God above all things merely by his own strength; this was the teaching only of the Scotists and the “Moderns” (i.e. Nominalists or Occamists).[367] At that time he was perhaps better acquainted with Biel, who instances Thomas and Bonaventure in opposition to this doctrine.[368] Luther was also careless in the accounts he gave even of the theology of his own circle, viz. that of the Occamists, and the injustice he does Scholasticism as a whole, he repeats against his own school by exaggerating its faults or suppressing the necessary distinctions in order to be the better able to refute its theses by the Bible and St. Augustine. As therefore it is impossible to form an opinion on Scholasticism as a whole from Luther’s assertions, so we cannot trust his account even of his own masters, in whose works he thinks himself so well versed.
He is, for instance, neglecting a distinction when he repeatedly asserts that Occam, his “Master,” denied the biblical truth that the Holy Ghost is necessary for the performance of a good work. As a matter of fact, the Occamists, like the Scotists, did not here differ essentially from the Thomists, although differences are apparent in their teaching on the supernatural habit, and on the preparation for the attainment of this supernatural righteousness, i.e. for justification.[369] He is wronging his own “factio occamica” when, from its teaching that man could, by his natural powers, acquire a love of God beyond all things, he at once infers that it declared infused grace to be superfluous,[370] and further, when, for instance, he asserted that the axiom quoted above, and peculiarly beloved of the Occamists, “Facienti quod est in se Deus non denegat gratiam,” was erroneous, as though it placed a “wall of iron” between man and the grace of God.[371] No Occamist understood the axiom in the way he wishes to make out.
Luther went so far in his gainsaying of the Occamist doctrine of the almost unimpaired ability of man for purely natural good, that he arrived at the opposite pole and began to maintain that there was no such thing as vitally good acts on man’s part; that man as man does not act in doing what is good, but that grace alone does everything. The oldest statements of this sort are reserved for the quotations to be given below from his Commentary on Romans. We give, however, a few of his later utterances to this effect. They prove that the crass denial of man’s doing anything good continued to characterise him in later life as much as earlier.
In the Gospel-homilies contained in his “Postils,” he teaches the people that it was a “shameful doctrine of the Popes, universities, and monasteries” to say “we ought by the strength of our free will to begin [exclusive of God’s help?] by seeking God, coming to Him, running after Him and earning His grace.” “Beware, beware,” he cries, “of this poison; it is the merest devil’s doctrine by which the whole world is led astray.... You ask: How then must we begin to become pious, and what must we do that God may begin in us? Reply: What, don’t you hear that in you there is no doing, no beginning to be pious, as little as there is any continuing and ending? God only is the beginning, furthering and ending. All that you begin is sin and remains sin, let it look as pretty as it will; you can do nothing but sin, do how you will ... you must remain in sin, do what you will, and all is sin whatever you do alone of your free will; for if you were able of your own free will not to sin, or to do what is pleasing to God, of what use would Christ be to you?”[372]
Elsewhere, on account of the supposed inability of man, he teaches a sort of Quietism: “Is anyone to become converted, pious and a Christian, we don’t set about it; no praying, no fasting assists it; it must come from heaven and from grace alone.... Whoever wants to become pious, let him not say: ‘I will set about doing good works in order to obtain grace,’ but, ‘I will wait to see whether God by His word will give me His grace and His spirit.’”[373]
And on another occasion