Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  127. Thus, the Bible does not honor the authorities, but threatens them with danger, and drags them into manifest contempt; and still with consummate care it commands us to reverence and fear them, and to render them all manner of service. Why is this? Surely because God himself desires to punish them, and has reserved vengeance for himself instead of surrendering it to their subjects. Jeremiah argues in chapter 12, 1, concerning the prosperity of the way of the ungodly, and yet the Lord is righteous. But he concludes: “Thou, O Lord, fattenest them and preparest them for the sacrifice.”

  128. So might it be said that the authorities are God’s swine, as it were; he fattens them, gives them wealth, power, fame and the obedience of their subjects. They are not pursued, while they themselves pursue and oppress others; they suffer no injury, but they inflict it upon others; they do not give to others, but rob them until the hour comes when, like fattened swine, they are slaughtered. Hence the German proverb: A prince is a rare bird in the kingdom of heaven or, princes are wild game in heaven.

  129. Accordingly, those whom Moses calls here “Nephilim,” which is an odious and disgraceful name, were without doubt the lawful administrators of Church and State. But because they did not use their office as they should, God marks and brands them with this opprobious name. As we, in this corrupt state of nature, are unable to use the least gift without pride, so God, most intolerant of pride, thrusts the mighty from their throne, and leaves the rich empty.

  130. I accept, then, the word “Nephilim” as having an active signification, being equivalent to tyrants, oppressors, revelers. I believe, furthermore, as has been the case with other languages also, that Moses has transferred the usage of this word from his own times to those before the deluge, after changing somewhat its meaning, inasmuch as these degenerate descendants of the sons of God abused their power and position for the oppression of the good, just as those Anakim were tyrants relying upon bodily strength, and so Moses will presently show.

  V. 4b. And also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them; the same were the men that were of old, the men of renown.

  131. Jerome1 renders: Isti sunt potentes a seculo (these are mighty men from the beginning). But the word seculum (olam) does not here signify duration of time, nor does it predicate extent. These giants did not exist from the beginning, they were not born until the sons of God had degenerated. But seculum (olam) connotes a second predicate, that of substance, so that Moses explains the nature of the power in which they trusted to have been secular or worldly. They despised the ministry of the Word as a vile office; therefore they seized upon another office, a secular one. The very same thing our Papists have done. It has pleased them better to hold ample revenues and worldly kingdoms than to be hated of all men for the sake of the Gospel.

  1 So also the A. V. and the R. V., while Luther has by no means the philological science against him. Mundus, seculum, aion, and olam are used to express the same conception. Translator.

  132. As far as Moses is concerned, the noun olam designates the world itself, and also age or time. Hence it is to be carefully noted when olam (seculum) signifies duration of time, and when it signifies “world” in the Scriptures. Here it signifies of necessity “world,” for they did not exist from the beginning.

  133. This clause, then, aptly describes the power they had received, not from the Church, nor from the Holy Spirit, but from the devil and the world. It is, as it were, the counterpart of what Christ says before Pontius Pilate, John 18, 36: “My kingdom is not of this world.” The servants of the Word struggle with hunger, and they labor under the hate of all classes. In consequence, they cannot exercise tyranny; but those who possess kingdoms, who govern states, who possess castles and domains, are equipped for exercising tyranny.

  134. This clause contains also a suggestive reference to the small Church with her few souls. These are cross-bearers without wealth; but they possess the Word. Their only wealth is what the world despises and persecutes. The Nephilim, on the other hand, or giants, usurp as the descendants of the patriarchs the splendid name of the Church, and possess also kingdoms. They exercise dominion, and pursue the miserable Church in their power. In accordance therewith Moses calls them mighty before, or in, the world; or worldlings and temporal potentates.

  135. What Jerome renders viri famosi (famous men) is, in Hebrew, “men of name,” that is, renowned or famous in the world. Moses touches here also upon the sin of the Cyclopeans, who, possessing everything in the world, possessed also a famous name and were renowned throughout the world; while, on the contrary, the true sons of God, namely Noah and his sons, were held in the greatest scorn and regarded as heretics, as sons of the devil, as a blot upon the grandeur of Church and State. So is it now with us. Christ testifies in Matthew 24, 37, that the last times resemble the times of Noah.

  136. Moses had before testified that the Holy Spirit would be taken from the wicked and they would be sent in the ways of their own desire. They were, accordingly, such rascals as the pope today with his cardinals and bishops, who are not only styled princes and possess kingdoms, but also take to themselves the name of Church, so as to subject us as heretics to the ban, and securely to condemn us. They do not permit themselves to be called tyrants, nor wicked, nor temple-robbers. They wish to be styled most kind, holy and reverend gentlemen.

  137. The meaning, therefore, is not that which Lyra follows when he understands “famous” as “notorious.” As the world does not call the pope Antichrist, but ascribes to him the name of the greatest saint and admires him as if he and his carnal creatures were filled with the Holy Spirit and incapable of error, and therefore humbly worships whatever he commands or advises — exactly so those giants had a noble name and were held in admiration by the whole world. On the contrary, Noah with his followers was condemned as a rebel, as a heretic, as a traducer of the dignity of State and Church. So today do bishops regard us who profess the Gospel.

  D. THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY SPIRIT.

  138. This passage furnishes a description of the sins with which that age was burdened: Men were averse to the Word; they were given over to their own lusts and reprobate minds; they sinned against the Holy Spirit by persistent impenitence, by defending their ungodly behavior and by warring upon the recognized truth. Yet with all these blasphemies they retained the name and authority, not only of the State, but also of the Church, as if God had exalted them to the place of the angels. When this was the state of things, and Noah and Lamech with their pious ancestor Methuselah taught in vain, God turned them over to the desires of their hearts (Ps 81, 12) and maintained silence until they should experience the flood, the prophecy of which they refused to believe.

  139. This is falling away from God and Church and entering upon illicit marriage. One sin, unless corrected at once, will lead to another, and so on indefinitely until the state is reached which Solomon describes in Proverbs 18, 3, “When the wicked cometh, there cometh also contempt, and with ignominy Cometh reproach.” They who thus sin, even if afterward rebuked, do not heed. They imagine they stand in need of no instructor, and think they represent a just cause. They do not believe in a life after this, or even hope for salvation, while living in open sin. Notwithstanding, scorn and shame shall overwhelm them. It was this persistent impenitence and consummate contempt for the Word that impelled God to visit all flesh with a universal flood.

  IV.

  GOD’S REPENTANCE AND GRIEF THAT HE MADE MAN.

  A.

  THE REPENTANCE OF GOD.

  1.

  The Words, “The wickedness of man was great.”

  a.

  How Luther used these words against the doctrine of free will; how the advocates of free will falsely interpreted them, and how they are refuted 140-141.

  *

  Concerning free will.

  (1)

  Augustine’s doctrine of free will misinterpreted by the schools 140.

  (2)

  The
schools unreasonably defend it 141.

  (3)

  Man has no free will and without the grace of the Holy Spirit can do nothing 142-143.

  (4)

  The reproving office of the Holy Spirit makes it clear that man has no free will 144.

  (5)

  Whether there is hope, if a council be held, that the Papists will abandon their false doctrine of free will 145.

  (6)

  How the true doctrine of free will leads us to a knowledge of sin and what we are to hold in reference to it 146.

  (7)

  Why we should guard against the false doctrine concerning free will 147.

  *

  The comfort for one who commits sins of infirmities 147.

  *

  All endeavors without the Holy Spirit are evil 148.

  (8)

  We are to distinguish in the doctrine of free will what is good politically from what is good theologically 149-150.

  b.

  These words are wrongly understood by the Jews and sophists 151.

  *

  How we should view the discussions of philosophers in regard to God and divine things 152.

  c.

  These words should be understood as spoken not only of the people before the flood, but of all men 153.

  2.

  The Words, “It Repented Jehovah.”

  a.

  How the repentance of God is to be reconciled with the wisdom and omniscience of God.

  (1)

  The way sophists answer this question 154.

  (2)

  Luther’s answer 155-157.

  *

  How man should treat questions which lead us into the throne of the divine majesty 158.

  *

  How the passages of Scripture are to be understood which attribute to God the members of a human body 159.

  *

  Whether the Anthropomorphites were justly condemned 159.

  *

  Why God is represented to us as if he sprang from the temporal and the visible 161-163.

  *

  We cannot explore God’s nature 163.

  *

  In what pictures God reveals himself in the Old Testament, and in the New 164.

  *

  The will of God in signs and the will of God’s good pleasure, “signs” and “Beneplaciti.”

  (a)

  How we can know God’s will in signs 165-166.

  (b)

  Why we cannot know the will of God’s pleasure, nor fathom it 165-166.

  (c)

  What is really to be understood by the will in signs 167.

  b.

  The way the schools explain these words 168.

  c.

  How they are to be rightly understood 169.

  *

  Disputing about God’s majesty and omnipotence places man in a dangerous position 169-171.

  *

  How man should hold to the signs by which God revealed himself 171.

  *

  What the will of God’s pleasure is, to what it serves and how it is revealed in Christ 172-176.

  *

  The will of good pleasure of which the fathers speak cannot comfort the heart 175.

  *

  The only view of the Godhead possible in this life 176.

  d.

  In what sense it can be said that “it repented Jehovah that he had made man” 177.

  IV. THE REPENTANCE AND GRIEF OF GOD BECAUSE HE HAD MADE MAN.

  A. THE REPENTANCE of God.

  Vs. 5-6. And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented Jehovah that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

  140. This is the passage which we have used against “free will,” of which Augustine writes that without the grace of the Holy Spirit it can do nothing but sin. The scholastics, however, the champions of free will, are not only hard beset by this clear passage, but also by the authority of Augustine, and they sweat. Of Augustine they say that his language is hyperbolical, as Basil writes of one who in refuting the other side had gone too far, that he did like the farmers; they when trying to straighten out crooked branches bend them a little too far on the other side; and so Augustine, in beating back the Pelagians, is asserted to have spoken more severely against free will in the defense of grace than the merits of the case warranted.

  141. As far as this passage is concerned, it is slandered when it is held that it speaks only of the evil generation before the flood, and that now men are better, at least some who make good use of their freedom of will. Such wretched interpreters do not see that the passage speaks of the human heart in general, and that a particle is plainly added, Rak, which signifies “only.” In the third place, they fail to see that after the flood the same declaration is repeated in the eighth chapter in almost precisely the same terms. For God says, “The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth,” Gen 8, 21. Here evidently he does not speak only of the antediluvians. He rather speaks of those to whom he makes the promise that henceforth another general flood of water shall never come, that is, of all the offspring of Noah. These are words of universal application: “The imagination of man’s heart is evil.”

  142. We draw, therefore, the general conclusion that man without the Holy Spirit and without grace can do nothing but sin, and thus he unhaltingly goes forward from sin to sin. When in addition, he will not endure sound doctrine but rejects the word of salvation and resists the Holy Spirit, he becomes an enemy of God, blasphemes the Holy Spirit and simply follows the evil desires of his heart. Witnesses of this are the examples of the prophets, Christ and the Apostles, the primeval world under Noah as teacher, and also the example of our adversaries today, who cannot be convinced by anything that they are in error, that they sin, that their worship is ungodly.

  143. Other declarations of Holy Scripture prove the same thing. Is not the statement of the fourteenth Psalm, verse 3, sweeping enough when it says: “Jehovah looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there was any that did understand, and did seek after God. They are all gone aside?” Thus, Ps 116, 11, “All men are liars;” and Paul, “God hath shut up all unto disobedience,” Rom 11, 32. These passages are most sweeping, and emphatically force the conclusion that we all, without the Holy Spirit, whose dispenser is Christ, can do nothing but err and sin. Therefore, Christ says in the Gospel, “I am the vine, ye are the branches: ... apart from me ye can do nothing,” Jn 15, 5. Without me you are a branch cut off, dry, dead and ready for the burning.

  144. And the very reason the Holy Spirit performs the office of reproving the world is that he may call the world back to penitence and the recognition of its derangement. But the world remains consistent with itself; it hears not and believes it can please God with forms of worship of its own choosing and without the sanction of the divine Word, and does not permit itself to be undeceived.

  145. If ever a council should be held, the final declaration and conclusion with reference to this very point, the freedom of will, will be that we should abide by the decisions of the pope and the fathers. We may clamor until we are hoarse that man in himself without the Holy Spirit is evil, that everything he does without the Holy Spirit or without faith is condemned before God, that his heart is depraved and all his thought; we shall effect nothing.

  146. Therefore, the mind is to be grounded in this, and we are to hold fast the doctrine which lays before us our sin and condemnation. This knowledge of our sin is the beginning of salvation; we must absolutely despair of ourselves and give glory for righteousness to God alone. Why does Paul elsewhere complain, and in Romans 7, 18 freely confess that there is nothing good in him? He says plainly, “in my flesh;” so that we understand that the Holy Spirit alone can heal our infirmity. When this has been fixed in our hearts, the foundation of our salvation is largely laid, inasmuch as subsequently clear testimonies are given that G
od will not cast away the sinner, that is, one who recognizes his sin and desires to come to his senses and thirsts after righteousness and the remission of sin through Christ.

  147. Let us, therefore, take care not to be found among those Cyclopeans who oppose the Word of God and proclaim their freedom of will and their own powers. Though we often err, though we fall and sin, still, upon yielding to reproof on the part of the Holy Spirit with an humble confession of our depravity, the Holy Spirit himself will be present, and not only not impute to us the sin we acknowledge, but the grace of Christ shall cover it and he will shower upon us other gifts necessary to this life as well as the future one.

  148. But the words of Moses are to be more closely considered, for with a definite purpose he has used here a peculiar expression; he has not merely said, “The thoughts of man’s heart are evil,” but “the imagination of the thoughts of his heart.” Thus he expresses the highest that man can achieve with his thoughts or with his reason and free will. “Imagination” he calls that which man with his strongest effort devises, selects, creates like a potter, and believes to be most beautiful.