LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
with Christ.[452]
We may doubt whether the young Doctor of Wittenberg was qualified to grapple with so great a task as the explanation of this charter of faith, especially bearing in mind his comparatively insignificant knowledge of the Fathers of the Church and the theological literature of the past, his impetuosity in dealing with recondite questions, and his excitable fancy which always hurried in advance of his judgment. At any rate, he himself thought his powers sufficient for a work on which the most enlightened minds of the Church had tested their abilities. He immediately followed up this Commentary with other lectures on certain epistles of St. Paul, wherein the Apostle discloses the depths of his knowledge.
On perusing the lengthy pages of the Commentary on Romans we are amazed at the eloquence of the young author, at his dexterity in description and his skill in the apt use of biblical quotations; but his manner of working contrasts very unfavourably with that of the older Commentators on the Epistle, such as Thomas of Aquin with his brevity and definiteness and, particularly, his assurance in theological matters. Luther’s mode of treating the subject is, apart from other considerations, usually too rhetorical and not seldom quite tedious in its amplitude.
The work, with its freedom both in its language and its treatment of the subject, reveals many interesting traits which go to make up a picture of Luther’s inward self.
He starts with the assumption that the whole of the Epistle was intended by its author to “uproot from the heart the feeling of self-righteousness and any satisfaction in the same,” and—to use his own odd expression—“to implant, establish and magnify sin therein (‘plantare, ac constituere et magnificare peccatum’).”[453] “Although there may be no sin in the heart or any suspicion of its existence,” he declares, we ought and must feel ourselves to be full of sin, in contradistinction to the grace of Christ from Whom alone we receive what is pleasing to God.
In his passionate opposition to the real or imaginary self-righteous he allows himself, in these lectures, to be drawn into an ever deeper distrust of man’s ability to do anything that is good. The nightmare of self-righteousness never leaves him for a moment. His attack would have been justifiable if he had merely been fighting against sinful self-righteousness which is really selfishness, or against the delusion that natural morality will suffice before God. Nor does it appear who is defending such erroneous ideas against him, or which school upheld the thesis Luther is always opposing, viz. that there is a saving righteousness which arises, is preserved, and works without the preventing and accompanying grace of God. It is, however, clear that there was in his own soul a dislike for works; so strong in fact is his feeling in this regard that he simply calls all works “works of the law,” and cannot be too forcible in demonstrating the antagonism of the Apostle to their supposed over-estimation. Probably one reason for his selection of this Epistle for interpretation was that it appeared to him to agree even better than other biblical works with his own ideas against “self-righteousness.” We must now consider in detail some of the leading ideas of the Commentary on Romans.
2. Gloomy Views regarding God and Predestination
The tendency to a dismal conception of God plays, in combination with his ideas on predestination, an incisive part in Luther’s Commentary on Romans, which, so far, has received too little attention. The tendency is noticeable throughout his early mental history. He was never able to overcome his former temptations to sadness and despair on account of the possibility of his irrevocable predestination to hell, sufficiently to attain to the joy of the children of God and to the trustful recognition of God’s general and certain will for our salvation. The advice which Staupitz, among others, gave him was assuredly correct, viz. to take refuge in the wounds of Christ, and Luther probably tried to follow it. But we do not learn that he paid diligent heed to the further admonitions of the ancient ascetics, to exert oneself in the practice of good works, as though one’s predestination depended entirely on the works one performs with the grace of God. On the contrary, of set purpose, he avoided any effort on his own part and preferred the misleading mystical views of Quietism.
The melancholy idea of predestination again peeps out unabashed in the passage in his Commentary on the Psalms, where he says, that Christ “drank the cup of pain for His elect, but not for all.”[454]
If he set out to explain the Epistle to the Romans with a gloomy conception of God, in which we recognise the old temptations regarding predestination, owing to his misapprehension of certain passages of the Epistle concerning God’s liberty and inscrutability in the bestowal of grace, his ideas, as he advances, become progressively more stern and dismal. The editor of the Commentary remarks, not without reason, on the forcible way in which Luther, “even in chapter i., emphasises the sovereignty of the Will of God.”[455] It is true of many, Luther says there, that God gives them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness (cp. Rom. i. 24), nor is this merely a permission, but an appointment and command (“non tantum permissio, sed commissio et iussio”).[456] In such a case God commands the devil or the flesh to tempt a man and conquer him. It is true that when God chooses to act graciously He prevents the evil; but He also wills to be severe and to punish, and “then He makes the wicked to sin more abundantly (‘facit abundantius peccare’)”; then “He forsakes a man so that he may not be able to resist the devil, who carries out the order and the Will of God in bringing about his fall.”
The youthful University Professor believes that he is here teaching a “more profound theology.” No one was to come to him, he says, with the shallow and hackneyed assertion that, on the above hypothesis, man’s free will was destroyed; only narrow minds (“rudiores”) take exception at this “profundior theologia.”[457] The teaching of this new theology was the following:
“This man may do what he pleases, it is God’s will that he should be overcome by sin.” “It is true that God does not desire the sin, although He wills that it shall take place (‘non sequitur quod Deus peccatum velit, licet ipsum velit fieri’); for He only wills that it shall happen, in order to manifest in man the greatness of His anger and His severity by punishing in him the sin which He hates.” “It is therefore on account of the punishment that God wills that the sin shall be committed.... God alone may will such a thing” (“Hoc autem soli Deo licitum est velle”),[458] and he repeats fearlessly: “in order that all misery and shame may be heaped upon the man, God wills he should commit this sin.”[459] He fancies he is communicating to his pupils “the highest secrets of theology,” meant only for the perfect, when he assures them that both statements are right: God wills to oblige me and all men [to do what is good] and yet He does not give His grace to all, but only to whom He will, reserving to Himself the choice. Some it does not please Him to justify because He manifests so much the more through them His honour in the elect; in the same way He also wills sin, though only indirectly, viz. “that He may be glorified in the elect.” Hence we must not make it a mere matter of permission, for “how would God permit it unless it were His will?” “Senseless chatter,” thus he describes the unanimous contrary teaching of theologians, “such is the objection they raise that man would thus be damned without any fault on his part, because he could not fulfil the law and was expected to do what was impossible.”—We can only ask how his own method is to be described when he contents himself with this solution: “If that objection had any weight it would follow that it was not necessary to preach, to pray, to exhort, and Christ’s death would also not be necessary. Yet by means of all