LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
mysticism could not take root in him because, to start with, the necessary predisposition, concerning which the other mystics and Tauler are agreed, was wanting, viz. above all humility, calmness and that holy indifference, which allows itself to be led by God along the path of the rules of its calling without any ulterior, private aims; peaceableness, composure of mind and zeal in prayer were not his. What mysticism left behind in Luther was scarcely more than the fragrance of its words, without any real fruit. What took root and grew in him was rather the hard wood from which lances are made, ready for every combat that may arise. His mysticism itself gives the impression of being part of the battle which his antagonism to the Occamists led him to give to Scholasticism. Those who contradicted his new ideas—even his brother monks, like the Erfurt philosophers and theologians—appeared to him to be opposed on account of their Scholasticism. The most effective way of escaping or overcoming them seemed to him the replacing of the older theology by another, in which, together with Holy Scripture and St. Augustine, mysticism should occupy a chief place.
By this, however, we do not mean that the mysticism of Luther was merely a fighting weapon. From his letters we may gather that he lived in the belief that his new road would conduct him to a joyous nearness to God.
The letter is dated December 14, 1516, in which he exhorts his friend Spalatin, at the Court of the Elector, to taste in Tauler “the pure, thorough theology, which so closely resembles the old, and to see how bitter everything is that is ourselves,” in order to “discover how sweet the Lord is.”[430] He is already so mystically inclined that he will not even advise his friend in answer to a query, which little religious books he should translate into German for the use of the people; this advice lay in the counsel of God, as what was most wholesome for man was generally not appreciated; hardly was there one who sought for Christ; the world was full of wolves (these thoughts certainly seem to have remained with him in his public career); we must mistrust even our best intentions and be guided only by Christ in prayer; but the “swarm of religious and priests always follow their own good and pious notions and are thereby miserably deceived.”
His letter to George Spenlein, which is saturated with an extravagant mysticism of grace, also belongs to the same year, 1516.[431]
On December 4, 1516 (see above, p. 87), Luther finished seeing through the press the “Theologia Deutsch,” which he brought out, first in an incomplete edition, because he was under the impression that it was by Tauler. It is an echo of Tauler’s authentic works, somewhat distorted, however, by Luther’s Preface, at the end of which he declares that a thorough teaching of the Holy Scripture “must make fools,” intending thereby to contrast the insignificance of natural knowledge with Divine revelation. The booklet teaches mysticism from the Church’s standpoint, though its language is not well chosen. There is, however, no real need to interpret certain obscure passages in a pantheistic sense, as has been done. The booklet cannot therefore be taken as a proof that Luther at that time was pantheistically inclined, or that he possessed so little theological and philosophical knowledge as not to be able to distinguish between Pantheism and the teaching of the Church. Nor is there the slightest trace of specifically Lutheran doctrine in the “Theologia Deutsch.”[432]
In a sermon of February 15, 1517, based on Tauler, Luther busies himself with those priests, laymen, and in particular religious, who, so he says, wish to be thought especially pious, but who are hypocrites because, even in spiritual things, they do not overcome their self-love because they attempt, for the love of God, to accomplish much and to do great things; almost all Tauler’s sermons, he remarks, show how clearly he saw through these false self-righteous, and how energetically he opposed them.[433] As a matter of fact, Tauler, in the remarks referred to, has in his mind those who deserve, for other reasons, to be blamed on account of their perverse and proud mind, while Luther utilises such utterances in support of his own notorious dislike for good works and for zealous individual effort.[434]
In his defence of his Wittenberg Indulgence Theses against Eck’s “Obelisci” (1518), we also find a characteristic misrepresentation of Tauler. Tauler, speaking of the possible torments resulting from the deprivation of religious consolation which may be experienced on earth, instances the vision of a poor soul who, by humble resignation to God’s Will, was delivered from its trouble. Luther takes the story as referring to a soul in Purgatory, and sees therein not merely a proof that souls are resigned in the place of purgation, but that they actually rejoice in the separation from salvation which God has imposed upon them; finally, he uses the story in support of his twenty-ninth pseudo-mystical thesis, in which he says that, on account of the piety of those who have died in the peace of God, it is uncertain whether all souls in Purgatory even wish to be delivered from their torments.[435] His mystical ideas concerning abandonment to God’s good pleasure had warped his understanding.
In the above passage, and again later, he instances Paul and Moses as men who had desired to become a curse of God. If they expressed such a wish during life, he declares, a similar desire on the part of the dead is comprehensible. The common and better interpretation of the Bible passages in question regarding Moses and Paul differs very much from that of Luther.
Luther embraced the idea, which permeates Tauler’s works, of the painful annihilation of self-will and of all man’s sensual inclinations, not in order to mortify his own self-will and sensuality by obedience to the rules of his Order and humble submission to the practices of the Church, but the better to make his delusive disregard for the zealous performance of good works appear high and perfect to his own mind and in that of others.
One should be ready, so he asserts in the defence of his theses against Prierias, to renounce all hope in any merit or reward to such an extent that “if you were to see heaven open before you, you would nevertheless, as the learned Dr. Tauler, one of your own Order [Prierias was also a Dominican], says, not enter unless you had first consulted God’s Will as regards your entering, so that even in glory you may not be seeking your own will.”[436] In Tauler there is, it is true, something of the sort,[437] though it does not authorise Luther to assume the standpoint he does in his theory of resignation. Luther in his Commentary on Romans, as already stated, goes so far as to preach resignation to eternal damnation, and even to demand of us a desire to be damned should it please God to decree it for us (see below, vi. 9). All this for the ostensible purpose of excluding the slightest appearance of self-love. “But how,” a modern author asks, writing with a knowledge of the better Christian mysticism, “can there be less merit in striving after the final consummation in the next life which is offered and recommended to us by the Divine favour, and from which final salvation is inseparable? How then can the ideal state of the mystic consist in indifference to his perfection and salvation, to heaven or hell?”[438] “Indifference with regard to the attainment of the highest, uncreated, eternal, endless Good can never be postulated.”[439] But Luther thinks he can justify this and other errors with the help of Tauler and his own mysticism.
But he did not, and could not, use Tauler as a weapon against the Schoolmen. All he could do was to magnify the loss which these had suffered through not being acquainted with such a theology as Tauler’s, “the truest theology.” Tauler, as a matter of fact, was not opposed to Scholasticism, indeed, the pith of his exhortations rests upon well-grounded scholastic principles.
By the time his second and complete edition of the “Theologia Deutsch” appeared, the printing of which was finished on June 4, 1518, Luther knew with certainty that this booklet was not by Tauler. Nevertheless, in the Preface he heaps exaggerated