Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  The second letter in question, dated December 21, 1514, is addressed to the “excellent Fathers and Gentlemen, the Dean and other Doctors of the Theological Faculty of Studies at Erfurt” and in the very first words shows itself to be a humble apology and request for pardon. It contains further information regarding the affair. He begs them at least not to deem him guilty of a fault committed knowingly and out of malice; if he had done anything unseemly, at least it was unintentionally (“extra dolum et conscientiam”); he begs them to dispense and ratify, to supply what is wanting and to remit, if not the penalty, at least the fault.

  We learn nothing further about the dispute. The negotiations did not lead to the renewal of the good relations with Erfurt, which had been interrupted by his brusque departure. The people of Erfurt were amongst the first to object to the new, so-called Augustinism and Paulinism of the Wittenberg Professor.

  CHAPTER II

  HARBINGERS OF CHANGE

  1. Sources, Old and New

  The history of Luther’s inward development during his first years at Wittenberg up to 1517, is, to a certain extent, rather obscure. The study of deep psychological processes must always be reckoned amongst the most complex of problems, and in our case the difficulty is increased by the nature of Luther’s own statements with regard to himself. These belong without exception to his later years, are uncertain and contradictory in character, and in nearly every instance represent views influenced by his controversies and such as he was wont to advocate in his old age. Thanks to more recent discoveries, however, we are now possessed of works written by Luther in his youth which supply us with better information. By a proper use of these, we are able to obtain a much clearer picture of his development than was formerly possible.

  Many false ideas which were once current have now been dispelled; more especially there can no longer be any question of the customary Protestant view, namely, that the Monk of Wittenberg was first led to his new doctrine through some unusual inward religious experience by which he attained the joyful assurance of salvation by faith alone, and not by means of the good works of Popery and monasticism. This so-called inner experience, which used to be placed in the forefront of his change of opinions, as a “Divine Experience,” as shown below, must disappear altogether from history. Objection must equally be taken to some of the views with which Catholics have been wont to explain Luther’s apostasy. The path Luther followed, though subject to numerous and varied influences, is now seen to be much less complicated than was hitherto supposed.

  Two results already brought to light by other authors are now confirmed. First, the process of his falling away from the Church’s teaching was already accomplished in Luther’s mind before he began the dispute about Indulgences with Tetzel; secondly, a certain moral change, the outlines of which are clearly marked, went hand in hand with his theological views, indeed, if anything, preceded them; the signs of such an ethical change are apparent in his growing indifference to good works, and to the aims and rules of conventual life, and in the quite extraordinary self-confidence he displayed, more especially when disputes arose.

  Characteristic of the ethical side of his nature are the remarks and marginal annotations we have of his, which were published by Buchwald in 1893; these notes were written by Luther in many of the books he made use of in his early days as theological lecturer at Erfurt (1509-10). These books are the oldest available sources for a correct estimation of his intellectual activity. They were found in the Ratsschul-Library at Zwickau. Of special interest is a volume containing various writings of St. Augustine, and a copy of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, which is of great importance on account of the notes. The running commentary in Luther’s early handwriting shows his great industry, enables us to see what especially impressed him, and betrays also his marvellous belief in himself as well as his stormy, unbridled temper.

  Of Luther’s letters written previous to 1514 only five remain, and are of comparatively little historical interest. Of the year 1515 there is only one, of 1516 there are nineteen, of 1517 already twenty-one, and they increase in importance as well as in number.

  In 1513 he began, at Wittenberg University, his Commentary on the Psalms, which has been known since 1876, and continued those lectures up to 1515 or 1516. Following his lively and practical bent, he refers therein to the most varied questions of theology and the religious life, and occasionally even introduces contemporary matters, so that these lectures afford many opportunities by which to judge of his development and mode of thought. First the scholia, which till then had been known only in part, were edited in a somewhat cumbersome form by Seidemann, then a better edition by Kawerau, containing both the scholia and the glosses, followed in 1885. In dividing this exegetical work into scholia and glosses, Luther was following the traditional method of the Middle Ages. The glosses are very short, as was customary; they were written by Luther between the lines of the text itself or in the margin and explained the words and grammatical construction; on the sense they touch only in the most meagre fashion. On the other hand, the detailed scholia seek to unfold the meaning of the verses and often expand into free digressions. In addition to the glosses and the scholia on the Psalms, Kawerau’s edition also includes the preparatory notes, written by Luther in a copy of the first edition of the “Psalterium quincuplex” of Faber Stapulensis (Paris, 1509), which, like the glosses and scholia, attest both the learning of their author and the peculiar tendency of his mind. Luther used for his text the Latin Vulgate, making a very sparing use of his rudimentary Hebrew. The glosses and the scholia were, however, intended chiefly for the professor himself; to the students who attended his biblical lectures Luther was in the habit of giving a short dictation comprising a summary of what he had prepared, and then, with the assistance of his glosses and scholia, dilating more fully on the subject. Scholars’ notebooks containing such dictations given by Luther in early days together with his fuller explanation are in existence, but have never been printed.

  After the Psalms, the lectures of our Wittenberg “Doctor of the Bible” dealt with St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. This work — of such supreme importance for the comprehension of Luther’s spiritual development — with its glosses and scholia complete, was published only in 1908 in Ficker’s edition. The lectures on the Book of Judges, edited in 1884 by Buchwald and then again by Kawerau as a work of Luther supposed to have been delivered in 1516, are, according to Denifle, not Luther’s at all; they are largely borrowed from St. Augustine, and, at the very most, are a redaction by another hand of the notes of one of Luther’s pupils. Transcripts of Luther’s lectures on the Epistle to Titus, and Epistle to the Hebrews, delivered in 1516 and 1517 respectively, are still lying unedited in the Vatican Library. On the other hand, his lectures on the Epistle to the Galatians (1516-17) were brought out by himself in 1519.

  Further light may be shed on them by the publication of a hitherto unedited student’s notebook, discovered at Cologne in 1877.

  To the years 1514-20 belongs a rich mine of information in the sermons preached by Luther in the monastery church of the Augustinians, or in the parish church of the town. They consist of more or less detailed notes, written in Latin, on the Gospels and Epistles of the Sundays and Feast days; some are the merest sketches, but all, as we may assume, were written down by himself for his own use, or to be handed to others. Chronologically, they are headed by three sermons for Christmas time, probably dating from 1515. The exact dating of these older sermons is sometimes rather difficult, and will have to be undertaken in the future, the Weimar edition of Luther’s works having made no attempt at this. The sermons were all of them printed in 1720, with the exception of two printed only in 1886. A complete discourse held at a synodal meeting at Leitzkau, near Zerbst, and printed in 1708, stands apart, and probably belongs to 1515, a year of the greatest consequence in Luther’s development. To the same year belongs, without a doubt, the lecture delivered at a chapter of the Order, which may aptly be entitled: “Agai
nst the little Saints.” (See below, .)

  The first of the works written and published by Luther himself was of a homiletic nature; this was his Commentary on the Seven Penitential Psalms, published in 1517. To the same year, or the next, belong his expositions of the Lord’s Prayer and Ten Commandments, consisting of excerpts from his sermons sent by him to the press. The celebrated ninety-five Theses, which led directly to the dispute on Indulgences, followed next in point of time.

  Just as the Theses referred to throw light upon his development, so also, and to an even greater extent, do the Disputations which took place at academic festivals about that same period. In these Disputations propositions drawn up either by himself or by his colleagues, were defended by his pupils under his own direction. They display his theological views as he was wont to vent them at home, and are therefore all the more natural and reliable. Of such Disputations we have that of Bartholomew Bernhardi in 1516 “On the Powers and the Will of Man without Grace”; that of Francis Günther in 1517 “Concerning Grace and Nature,” also entitled “Against the Theology of the Schoolmen,” and the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, with Leonard Beyer as defendant of twenty-eight philosophical and twelve theological theses. In the latter theses there are also various notes in Luther’s handwriting.

  Of Luther’s writings, dating from the strenuous year 1518, some of which are in Latin and others in German and which throw some light on his previous development, we may mention in their chronological order: the sermon on “Indulgence and Grace,” the detailed “Resolutions” on the Indulgence Theses, the discourse on Penance, the “Asterisci” against Eck, the pamphlet “Freedom of the Sermon on Indulgence and Grace,” an exposition of Psalm cx., the reply to Prierias, the sermon on the power of excommunication, then the report of his trial at Augsburg and the sermon on the “Threefold Righteousness.” To these we must add his complete edition of “Theologia Deutsch,” an anonymous mystical pamphlet of the fourteenth century a portion of which he had brought out in 1516 with a preface of his own.

  These are the sources which Luther himself has left behind him and from which the inner history of his apostasy and of his new theology must principally be taken. The further evidence derivable from his later works, his sermons, letters and Table-Talk, will be dealt with in due course.

  Only at the end of 1518 was his new teaching practically complete. At that time a new and final element had been added, the doctrine of absolute individual certainty of salvation by “Fiducial Faith.” This was regarded by Luther and his followers as the corner-stone of evangelical Christianity now once again recovered. At the commencement of 1519, we find it expressed in the new Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (a new and enlarged edition of the earlier lectures), and in the new Commentary on the Psalms, which was printed simultaneously. Hence Luther’s whole process of development up to that time may be divided into two stages by the doctrine of the assurance of salvation; in the first, up to 1517, this essential element was still wanting: the doctrine of the necessity of belief in personal justification and future salvation does not appear, and for this reason Luther himself, later on, speaks of this time as a period of unstable, and in part despairing, search. The second stage covers the years 1517-18, and commences with the Resolutions and the Augsburg trial, where we find the Professor gradually acquiring that absolute certainty of salvation to which he finally attained through an illumination which he was wont to regard as God’s own work.

  In the next section we deal merely with the first stage, which we shall seek to elucidate from the psychological, theological and ethical standpoint.

  2. Luther’s Commentary on the Psalms (1513-15). Dispute with the Observantines and the “Self-righteous”

  Presages of the storm which Luther was about to raise were visible in his first course of lectures on the Psalms given at Wittenberg. With regard to several particularly important parts of his work on the Psalms, it would be desirable to determine to what precise time during the period 1513-15 they belong; but this is a matter of considerable difficulty. The polemics they contain against the so-called “Saints by works,” the “Self-righteous” and the Observantines, the last of which must here be considered first, seem to belong to the earlier part of the period. In particular his animus against the Observantines, traces of which are plentiful, seems to have been of early growth. It also deserves more attention than has hitherto been bestowed on it, on account of its psychological and theological influence on Luther.

  Under the Observantines Luther in his Commentary on the Psalms refers, openly or covertly, to the members of the German Augustinian Congregation, i.e. to those who adhered to that party to which, since his return from Rome, he had been opposed.

  No sooner had Luther, as Cochlæus remarked (), “deserted to Staupitz” and begun to defend his opinions, the aim of which was to surrender the privileged position of the Congregation and the stringency of the Rule, than his fiery temper led him to constitute himself the champion of the monasteries with whose cause he had allied himself, particularly that of Wittenberg; indeed, he was, if not actually the first, one of the earliest to take up the cudgels on their behalf. The mission to Rome with which he had previously been entrusted lent him special authority, and his expert knowledge of the case seemed to entitle him to a voice on the subject. To this was added the importance of his position at the University, his reputation as a talented and eloquent lecturer, and his power as a preacher. His sociability drew many to him, especially among the young, and his readiness of tongue marked him out as a real party man.

  In his lectures on the Psalms his fiery nature led him to attack sharply the Observantines, whom he frequently mentions by name; even in the lecture-room his aim was to prejudice the young Augustinians who were his audience against the defenders of the traditional constitution; instead of encouraging the rising generation of monks to strive after perfection on the tried and proved lines of their Congregation, he broke out into declamatory attacks against those monks who took their vocation seriously as they received it from their predecessors, and abused them as Pharisees and hypocrites; according to him, they were puffed up by their carnal mind because they esteemed “fasting and lengthy prayers.”

  There are Pharisees, he cries, even now who extol fasting and long-drawn prayer; “they make rules,” but “their zeal is directed against the Lord.” There are many in the Church who “dispute about ceremonies and are enthusiastic for the hollowness of exterior observances.” “I am acquainted with still more obstinate hypocrites.” “It is to be feared that all Observantines, all exempted, and privileged religious, must be reckoned among those puffed up in their carnal mind. How harmful they are to the Church has not yet become clear, but the fact remains and will make itself apparent in time. If we ask why they insist upon isolation, they reply: On account of the protection of the cloistral discipline. But that is the light of an angel of Satan.”

  The following attack on the Observantines in the lectures on the Psalms is on the same lines: There are plenty of “men proud of their holiness and observance, hypocrites and false brothers.” “But the fate of a Divine condemnation” will fall upon “all the proud and stiff-necked, all the superstitious, rebellious, disobedient, also, as I fear, on our Observantines, who under a show of strict discipline are only loading themselves with insubordination and rebellion.”