Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  We may, in the third place, cast a glance at the ethical consequences of the theory.

  Luther refuses to admit what all people naturally believe, viz. that if God gives commandments man must be able either to obey, or to disobey, and thus incur guilt. What he teaches is, that God has a right and reasons of His own to impose commandments even though there should be no free-will; since without Him we are unable to keep the commandments He gives them for the wise purpose of teaching us how little we are capable of. The law is intended to awaken in us a sense of indigence, a desire for redemption, and the consciousness of guilt. When once this is present, God’s power does the rest; but the groundwork of all salvation is that we should become conscious of our nothingness, for which reason the belief in the enslaved will is to be proclaimed everywhere as the supreme virtue.

  “God,” he says, “has promised His grace first and foremost to the abandoned and to those who despair. Man cannot, however, be completely humbled so long as he is not conscious that his salvation is entirely beyond his own powers, plans and efforts, beyond both his will and his works, and depends solely upon the free choice, will and decree of another (‘ex alterius arbitrio, consilio, voluntate’).”

  Hence, instead of a moral responsibility for not keeping the commandments, all there is in man is a certain compunction for being unable to keep them. But this is surely very different from the consciousness of guilt. “Without free-will there is no guilt.” “Luther can no longer assert that guilt is incurred by the rejection of grace.” If a sense of guilt actually exists it cannot but be a subjective delusion, nor can it fail to be recognised as such as soon as we perceive the true state of the case, viz. that it is all due to delusive suggestion. “When Luther instances Adam’s fall as a proof of guilt, we can only see in this an admission of his perplexity. In this matter Luther’s theology — I mean Luther’s own theology — is altogether at fault.”

  The greatest stress is laid by the champion of the “enslaved will” on the alleged importance of this doctrine for the personal assurance of salvation.

  It is this doctrine alone, he says, which can impart to timorous man the pacifying certainty that he will find a happy eternity at the hands of the Almighty, Who guides him; on the other hand, the assumption of free-will shows man a dangerous abyss, ever yawning, into which the abuse of his freedom threatens to plunge him. Better to trust to God than to our own free-will.

  “Since God,” he writes, “has taken my salvation upon Himself and wills to save me, not by my own works but by His grace and mercy, I am certain and secure (‘securus et certus’) that no devil and no misfortune can tear me out of His hands.... This is how all the pious glory in their God.”

  With enthusiasm he describes this consciousness, carefully refraining, however, from looking at the other side, where perchance predestination to hell, even without free-will, may lie. When it presses on him against his will he at once drowns the thought with the consoling words of St. Paul on the greatness of the inscrutable ways of God. His justice must indeed be unsearchable, otherwise there would be no faith, but in the light of eternal glory we shall realise what we cannot now understand.

  The not over-enthusiastic critic, whom we have frequently had occasion to quote, remarks: “Seeing that faith according to Luther is no act of our will, but a mere form given to it by God, ... Luther is right in saying, that the very slightest deviation from determinism is fatal to his whole position. His ‘fides’ is ‘fides specialissima.’” It is the assurance of personal salvation. But even though “combined with a courageous certainty of salvation, Luther’s views, taken as they stand, would still offer no consolation to the tempted, so that when Luther has to deal with such he is forced to put these views in the background.” The critic goes on to wonder: “How if the thought, which Luther himself is unable to overcome, should trouble a man and make him believe that he is of the number of those whom the ‘voluntas maiestatis’ wills to hand over to destruction?” His conclusion is: “The certainty of salvation, about which Luther is so anxious, cannot be reached by starting from his premises.”

  At the end of his “De servo arbitrio,” summing up all he had said, Luther appeals to God’s rule and to His unchangeable predestination of all things, even the most insignificant; likewise to the empire of the devil and his power over spirits. His words on this matter cannot be read without amazement.

  “If we believe that Satan is the Prince of this world, who constantly attacks the Kingdom of Christ with all his might and never releases the human beings he has enslaved without being forced to do so by the power of the Spirit of God, then it is clear that there can be no free-will.” Either God or Satan rules over men; to this pet thought he adds: “The matter stands simply thus ... when God is in us, the devil is absent and then we can will only what is good; but when God is not there, the devil is, and then we can will only what is evil. Neither God nor Satan leaves us with an indifferent will.” “When the stronger of the two comes upon us,” he says, “and makes a prey of us, snatching us away from our former ruler, we become servants and prisoners to such an extent that we desire and do gladly what he wills (‘ut velimus et faciamus libenter quæ ipse velit’). Thus the human will stands,” Luther continues, using a simile which has become famous, “like a saddle-horse between the two. If God mounts into the saddle, man wills and goes forward as God wills ... but if the devil is the horseman, then man wills and acts as the devil wills. He has no power to run to one or the other of the two riders and offer himself to him, but the riders fight to obtain possession of the animal.”

  With frightful boldness he declares this view to be the very core and basis of religion. Without this doctrine of the enslaved will, the supernatural character of Christianity cannot, so he says, be maintained; the work of redemption falls to the ground, because whoever sets up free-will cheats Christ of all His merit; whoever advocates free-will brings death and Satan into the soul.

  In such passages we hear the real Luther, with all his presumptuous belief in himself: “To me the defence of this truth is a matter of supreme and eternal importance. I am convinced that life itself should be set at stake in order to preserve it. It must stand though the whole world be involved thereby in strife and tumult, nay, even fall into ruins and dissolve into nothing.”

  He ventures again to assert of Erasmus, that it had not been given him from above to feel, as he himself does, how in this great question “faith, conscience, salvation, the Word of God, the glory of Christ and even God Himself are involved.” Concerning himself, on the other hand, he assures the reader that, with no earthly motives, he is waging a great war “with a God-given courage and steadfastness which his foes call obstinacy; that he holds fast to his cause in spite of so many dangers to his life, so much hatred, so many persecutions, in short, exposed as he is to the fury of man and of all the devils.”

  In various passages a lurid light is thrown on his inner state. In language which recalls the pseudo-mysticism of his Commentary on Romans ten years earlier, he says, that the predestination to hell which he advocated was certainly terrifying, that he himself had frequently taken great offence at it and had been brought to the abyss of despair, so that he wished he had never been born; but then “he saw how wholesome was this despair and how near to grace.” “For whoever is convinced that all things depend on God’s Will, in his despair of self avoids making any choice and simply waits for God to act; such a one is near to grace and to finding salvation.” He himself “attributes nothing to himself, hopes for nothing and desires nothing” for his salvation; in thus waiting on the action of God’s grace he is very nigh to salvation, though he is as it were dead, stifled by the consciousness of guilt, and spiritually buried in hell; “whoever has read our works will be familiar with all this.”

  The echo of the pseudo-mystical ideas in which he had formerly steeped himself is plainly discernible in these words which go to form one of the most remarkable of the pictures he has left us of his state.

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bsp; Even the “self-righteous,” whom he had at one time so bitterly assailed, again rise from their graves. The admission of free-will, he tells them, destroys all inward peace. After every work performed, the question still rankles: “Is it pleasing to God, or does God require something more? This is attested by the experience of all self-righteous (iustitiarii), and I myself, to my cost, was familiar with it for many long years.”

  On the same page he gives us a glimpse of the psychological source whence his whole theory of the enslaved will springs. The doctrine was born of personal motives and fashioned to suit his own state of soul. None the less, he insists that it must also become the common property of all the faithful which none can do without, nay, the very basis of the new Christianity. “Without this doctrine I should believe it necessary to plague myself with uncertainty and to beat the air with hopeless efforts, even were there no perils for the soul, no tribulations and no devils. Though I should live and work for all eternity, my conscience would never attain to a real peace and be able to say to itself, you have done enough for God.” He goes so far as to say: “For myself I admit, that, were free-will offered me, I should not care to have it; I should not wish to see anything placed within my power by means of which I might work for my salvation, because I should never be able to withstand and endure the trials and dangers of life and the assaults of so many devils.”

  The last words of the book even exceed the rest in confidence, and the audacity of his demand that his work should be accepted without question almost takes away one’s breath: “In this book I have not merely theorised; I have set up definite propositions, and these I shall defend; no one will I permit to pass judgment on them, and I advise all to submit to them. May the Lord Whose cause is here vindicated,” he says, addressing himself to Erasmus, “give you light to make of you a vessel to His honour and glory. Amen.”

  The great importance of the work “De servo arbitrio” for a knowledge of the religious psychology of its author may warrant a description of some of its other psychological aspects, and first of the connection discernible between the denial of free-will and Luther’s so-called inward experiences, which were supposed to be behind his whole enterprise.

  He always believed he was following the irresistible pull of grace, and that he was merely treading the path appointed to him from above. In this work he breaks out into a loud hymn in praise of the irresistibility of the Divine action. “All that I have done,” he exclaims, “was not the result of my own will; this God knows, and the world, too, should have known it long ago. Hence, what I am and by what spirit and council I was drawn into the controversy is God’s business.” In this explanation, so typical of his character and way of thinking, is summed up his reply to that argument of Erasmus against his doctrine, particularly of free-will, where the latter had confronted him with the teaching of the whole of the Church’s past.

  For more than ten years, Luther adds, he had to listen to the reproach of his conscience: How dare you venture to overthrow the ancient teaching of all men and of the Church, which has been confirmed by saints, martyrs and miracles? “I do not think anyone has ever had to fight with this objection as I had. Even to me it seemed incredible that this impregnable stronghold which had so long withstood the storms, should fall. I adjure God, and swear by my very soul, that, had I not been driven, had I not been forced by my own insight and the evidence of things, my resistance would not have ceased even to this day.” But, under the higher impulse, he had suffered authorities ancient and modern to pass like a flood over his head that God’s grace might alone be exalted. “Since this is my only object, the spirit of the olden saints and martyrs and their wonder-working power witness in my favour.” The utter rigidity of his doctrine and line of thought, and the connection between his present attack on freedom and his own ostensible unfreedom in God’s hands could hardly be placed in a clearer light than here in Luther’s reply to the argument of Erasmus.

  In another passage he describes, perhaps unconsciously, his experiences with his own will, so inclined to contradiction and anger; he says: That the will is not free is evident from the fact that, “it becomes the more provoked the greater the opposition it encounters.... Whoever pursues an object passionately is not open to correction, as experience shows. If he gives way, this is not willingly, but under pressure, and because it serves his purpose. It is only the man who has no interest whatever who allows things to take their own course.”

  From time to time the several pet ideas which had played a part in his previous development are harnessed to his argument and made to prove the servitude of the will.

  We are conscious, he says, that, pressed down to the earth by concupiscence, we do not act as we should; hence man is not free to do what is good. The “sting” of this inability remains, as experience teaches, in spite of all theological distinctions. Natural reason, which groans so loudly under it and seeks to resist God’s action, would prove it even were it not taught in Holy Scripture. But Paul, throughout the whole of his Epistle to the Romans, while vindicating grace, teaches that we are incapable of anything, even when we fancy we are doing what is good.

  And further, the desire of gaining merit for heaven — the supposed error which he opposed quite early in his career owing to his distaste for works generally — can only be finally vanquished when the idol of free-will is overthrown. Then, too, he says, the fear of undeserved damnation by God also vanishes; for if there be no merit for heaven, then neither can there be any for hell; accordingly we may say without hesitation what must otherwise be repellent to every mind, viz. that God condemns to hell although man has not deserved it (“immeritos damnat”); this is the highest degree of faith, to hold fast to the belief that “God is righteous when of His own will He makes us of necessity to be worthy of damnation (‘necessario damnabiles facit’), so that He would seem, as Erasmus says, to take delight in the torments of the damned and be more worthy of hatred than of love.”

  Here another element of his earlier development and mental trend comes into view, viz. a disregard for the rights of reason, based ostensibly on the rights of faith.

  The denial of free-will seems to him in this regard quite attractive — such at least is the impression conveyed. For, when we deny the freedom of the will, so much becomes contradictory and mysterious to our reason. But so much the better! “Reason speaks nothing but madness and foolishness, especially concerning holy things.” “Faith,” so he declares at great length, “has to do with things that do not appear (Heb. xi. 1); in order that true faith may enter in, everything that is to be believed must be wrapped in darkness. But things cannot be more completely concealed than when what is seemingly contradictory is presented to the mind, to the senses and to experience.” In the present case, according to Luther, the apparent injustice of God in the “seemingly unjust” punishment of sinners, who are not free agents, is a grand motive for faith in His Justice. Luther here displays his love of paradox. Even more than in his other writings plentiful opportunity for paradox presents itself in the “De servo arbitrio,” and of it he makes full use. “God makes alive by putting to death,” he writes in the passage under consideration, “He renders guilty and thereby justifies; He drags down the soul to hell and thereby raises it to heaven.”

  Among the forcible expressions by which, here as elsewhere, he attempts to convince both himself and others, that he is in the right, are the following: “Liberty of choice is a downright lie (‘merum mendacium’).” “Whoever assigns free-will to man, thereby makes him Divine, and thus commits the worst form of sacrilege.” “To get rid altogether of the term free-will would be the best and most pious work (‘tutissimum et religiosissimum’).” Whoever follows the road of Erasmus “is rearing within himself a Lucian — or a hog of the breed of Epicurus.” “Erasmus concedes even more to free-will than all the sophists hitherto.” “He denies Christ more boldly than the Pelagians,” and those who hold with him are “double-dyed Pelagians, who merely make a pretence of being their o
pponents.” But he himself, Luther, had never fallen so low as to defend free-will: “I have always, up to this very hour, advocated in my writings the theory that free-will is a mere name.”

  In this last assertion he repudiates his Catholic days and refuses even to take into account the works dating from that time; in his Commentary on the Psalms he had expressly admitted free-will for doing what is good and for the choice in the matter of personal salvation; it is true, however, that he never published this work. But in many of the writings composed and published even after his apostasy he had clearly assumed free-will in man and made it the basis of his practical exhortations, as shown above (). Now, however, he prefers to forget all such admissions.

  On the other hand he pretends to recall that in his Catholic days, “Christ had been represented as a terrible judge, Who must be placated by the intercession of His mother and the saints; that the many works, ceremonies, Religious Orders and vows were invented to propitiate Christ and to obtain His grace.” Out of this is forged a fresh proof, drawn from his own experience, of the servitude of the will. For had Christ not been regarded exclusively as a judge, but as a “sweet mediator,” Who by His blood has redeemed all, then recourse would not have been had to the empty works of a self-righteous free-will. As it was, however, he had been made to feel strongly, that this delusion of works and free-will could only lead to despair. — Yet if, in his agony of soul, he really had sought and found peace of conscience in the theory of the enslaved will, how can we explain his many statements, made at almost that very time, concerning his enduring inward anguish and doubts? The Protestant theologian, O. Scheel, the last to translate and expound the “De servo arbitrio,” says of the comfort that Luther professed to have derived from the absence of free-will and from the theory of predestination, that “in the Reformer’s piety a tendency is discernible which militates against the supposed whole-hearted and settled confidence of his faith in the redemption.”