Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Just as during his public career Luther looked upon such statements as all the more useful seeing they blunted the edge of the awkward inferences drawn from the new Evangel, and served to vindicate his action from the charge of loosening the bonds of morality, so, at the close of his days, he was obliged in a similar way to hark back to the defence of good works against Antinomianism, of which the principal spokesman was Johann Agricola. It is true that the Antinomians based their contempt for the Law, which they said was harmful, and for the excessive respect for commandments and good works which, according to them, still prevailed, on nothing less than Luther’s own teaching. In reality it was to his advantage that their exaggerations forced him to explain away much that he had said, or at least to exercise greater caution. The encounter with Agricola the Antinomian will be described later (vol. v., xxix., 3). In spite of his being thus compelled to take the Law and good works under his wing in this controversy, Luther never, then or later, put forward the true relation of the Law to the Gospel nor the real foundation of good works. He became involved in contradictions, and to the end of his days it became more and more apparent how forced had been the introduction into his theology of good works and the keeping of the Law.

  Nicholas Amsdorf, Luther’s intimate friend and most docile pupil, published in 1559 a tract entitled “That the proposition ‘Good works are harmful to salvation’ is a good and Christian one preached both by St. Paul and by Luther.” Their “harmfulness” resided in their being regarded as meritorious for salvation. We may wonder what Luther would have thought of this writing had he been alive? In any case the Lutheran Formula of Concord of 1577 contains a mild protest against it: “The assertion that good works are necessary is not to be reprehended, seeing that it may be understood in a favourable sense”; it also appeals to what had been laid down in the Augsburg Confession; it could “not be gainsaid that, in both the Confession and the ‘Apologia,’ the words: ‘Good works are necessary,’ are frequently used.”

  As for the attitude of the Augsburg Confession, it declares concerning works — a declaration for which Melanchthon’s cautious pen was solely responsible— “We also teach that such faith [in Christ, whereby man is justified] must produce good fruit and good works, and that we must perform all manner of good works which God has commanded, for God’s sake.”

  No one was so much concerned as Melanchthon in insisting that the performance of good works should be represented as indispensable to the people, particularly from the pulpit. It vexed him, the more prudent of the two, to hear Luther again and again, and that often in hyperbolical and paradoxical form, laying such stress on faith alone. How far Melanchthon’s name may justifiably be quoted against what was undesirable in the olden Protestant teaching on works, should be clear from what has already been said concerning this theological henchman of Luther’s (cp. vol. iii., ff.).

  Luther’s admirers are wont to quote the following utterance of his when praising his attitude towards works: “Good, pious works never made a good, pious man, but a good, pious man performs good, pious works. Wicked works never made a wicked man, but wicked men perform wicked works.” That “wicked deeds never made a wicked man” he probably found some difficulty in really convincing many. If Luther meant that an unjust man or sinner, who is not cleansed by faith in Christ, can never act but wickedly, then it is the same error as we find in other passages and which is repeated in connection with the words just quoted: “Unless a man believes beforehand and is a Christian [‘consecrated by faith’] all his works are of no account, but are vain, foolish, criminal and damnably sinful.” This is surely as much beside the mark as the above statement of Luther’s concerning the relation between a “pious man” and “pious works.” Of supernatural works that are meritorious for heaven what Luther adds is indeed correct: “Hence, in every instance the person must first be good and pious previous to all works, and the good works follow and proceed from a good and pious person.” We must, however, decline to accept Luther’s other inferences, viz. that the sinner is not in a position to perform natural good works of his own, and that the just man does not become more righteous through good works.

  Hence Luther’s statement, however apparently ingenious, cannot remove the unfavourable impression produced by his doctrine of works. That it was highly valued by its author is plain from the number of times he repeats it under different forms. “Works do not make a Christian, but a Christian performs works,” so he exclaimed in a sermon in 1523, summing up in these specious words the instruction he had just given, viz. that the faithful must struggle to remove whatever of evil there is in them, and that they must “work good to their neighbour,” but not on any account try “to blot out sin by works, for this would be to shame and blaspheme God and Christ and to disgrace their own heritage,” viz. Justification by faith alone.

  Works of Charity. Luther and the Ages of the Past.

  For the purpose of recommending the Lutheran doctrine of works it is sometimes urged that Luther, while slighting other works of less account, assigned a place of honour to active works of charity, done for the sake of our neighbour, that he placed them on a firmer moral basis than they had hitherto occupied and promoted them so far as the unfavourable circumstances of his age allowed. A few words on the conception and particularly on the practice of charity as advocated by him may serve as a fit conclusion to the present section.

  First, we may mention that Luther is disposed to exaggerate the importance of works of charity done to our neighbour.

  It was an unjustifiable and paralysing restriction on the pious impulse towards works pleasing to God that Luther embodied in the rule he repeatedly lays down regarding works, viz. that they must be directed exclusively towards the benefit of others. “On this earth,” so he teaches in his Church postils, “man does not live for the sake of works, nor that they may profit him, for he has no need of them, but all works must be done for the sake of our neighbour.” “Thus must all works be done, that we see to it that they tend to the service of other people, impart to them the right faith and bring them to Christ’s Kingdom.” They bring them the “right faith” when they serve to “quiet their conscience.” Thus even here the Kingdom of God, which consists in the forgiveness of sins, must also play its part.

  Catholic doctrine recognises a wider field for good works. It regards as such even the works which the faithful perform directly for their own soul without any reference to their neighbour, such as self-conquest in contending against one’s own passions, or those works which are concerned primarily with honouring God whether in public worship or in the private life of the Christian. Luther himself, at least incidentally, also knows how to speak of the value of such works, though thereby he contradicts his other statements like the above.

  If, however, we neglect the principle, we have to admit, that Luther’s frequent exhortations to neighbourly charity and kindness contain some fine and truly Evangelical thoughts. With deep feeling he expresses his sorrow that his admonitions are not heeded to the extent he would have wished.

  In his statements already quoted concerning the corruption of morals consequent on the change of religion, we have heard him several times lamenting the notorious falling off in private benevolence and the quite remarkable decrease of public works of Christian charity. Everywhere avarice reigns supreme, so we have heard Luther repeatedly exclaim, and a reprehensible indolence in the doing of what is good has spread far and wide; everything is now different from what it had been “in the time of the monks and parsons,” when people “founded and built” right and left, and when even the poorest was anxious to contribute.

  His defenders now declare, that he “unlocked the true source of charity” by denying any meritorious character to works, thus sending to limbo the imperfect, mediæval motive of charity and substituting a better one in its place, viz. a “grateful love springing from faith.” Luther’s own words have been used to decry earlier ages, as though charity then had “merely had itself in view,” p
eople in those days having been intent solely on laying up merit “for them and theirs.”

  It is perfectly true that the Catholic Church gladly emphasises the reward charity brings to the giver.

  If in the times previous to Luther’s day, both in the Middle Ages and before, the Church frequently extolled the temporal and everlasting reward of charity, and if this proved to the faithful an incentive, she could at least in so doing appeal to those passages in the Gospel itself which promise to the charitable a heavenly recompense. Yet the thought of this reward did not exclude other high and worthy motives. So little were such motives slighted in the mediæval practice of charity, that, side by side with the heavenly reward, the original deeds of foundations, gifts and pious legacies still extant allege all kinds of other reasons, for instance, compassion for the helpless and concern for their bodily and spiritual welfare, or the furtherance of the common good by the establishment of institutions of public utility. One formula frequently used, which, taken literally, seems actually to ignore all merit and reward, runs variously: “For God’s sake only”; “for God”; or, “in order to please Him with temporal goods.” Thus the author of the “Wyhegertlin für alle frummen Christenmenschen,” a German work of edification, wrote in 1509: “Thanks to God’s grace there are still in our towns many hundreds of brothers and sisters who have united themselves out of Christian charity and compassion for the purpose of serving the poor sick people, the infirm, plague-stricken and lepers, purely for God’s sake.”

  Duke George of Saxony, in his reply to Luther’s “Widder den Meuchler zu Dresen,” really expresses the motive for the active Catholic charity formerly so lavishly displayed, when he speaks of the great possessions given by past ages of which the religious revolt had robbed the Church; of the “gifts freely given by nobles, burghers and peasants out of ardent Christian love and gratitude for His sacred bitter Passion, bright blood and guiltless death, to cloisters, parish churches, altars, chapels, cells, hospitals, religious houses, crafts,” etc.

  Neither did such motives or the motive of reward curtail the spirit of charity towards the close of the Middle Ages, as some Protestants have chosen to assert. On the contrary they served to animate it.

  On the basis of the data furnished by German archives a modern historian remarks of those times: “The spirit of Christian charity showed itself most active in the foundation of benevolent institutions, in which respect hardly any age can compare with the 15th century.” “Towards the close of the Middle Ages the gifts to hospitals, pest-houses and hostels were simply innumerable”; such is the opinion of another researcher. Even G. Uhlhorn, in his “Geschichte der christlichen Liebestätigkeit,” had to admit: “No period did so much for the poor as the Middle Ages,” though, agreeably to the standard of his peculiar Lutheranism, this author would fain make out that good works then were done out of mere egotism.

  Other Protestant authorities allow, that, even according to Luther’s own admission, the Catholic charity far exceeded that displayed by the new faith. “Here” (among the Catholics), says one historian, “Confraternities for the care of the poor and sick arose in the 16th and 17th centuries which far surpassed anything hitherto known in the purity of their aims and their extraordinary achievements.... Among the Catholics the reform in the nursing of the sick proceeded from Spain, which also produced the men who loomed largest in the Catholic Counter-Reformation, viz. the Jesuits and the Dominicans. From Spain came the model of the modern hospital with the nursing staff as we now know it.” “The Protestant communities during the two centuries which followed the Reformation showed a great lack of fruitfulness as regards works of charity.” “The hospitals in the Protestant districts, with few exceptions, were and remained bad, nor was anything done to improve them.”

  Although Luther’s praiseworthy efforts to awaken charity were not altogether wasted, yet neither his success in some localities nor the supposed purer and higher spirit he introduced into deeds of love were so apparent as to bear comparison with the charity so sedulously cultivated on the Catholic side. On the contrary, his complaints confirm the suspicion that in Lutheran circles works of charity were as a rule lamed by the lack of that very spirit of piety which should have been so manifest. (More in vol. vi., xxxv., 4.)

  In 1528 he told the inhabitants of Wittenberg: “This week your offerings will be solicited. I hear that people say they will give nothing to the collectors, but will turn them away. Well, thank God! You most ungrateful creatures, who are so grudging with your money, refuse to give anything, and, not satisfied with this, heap abuse on the ministers of the Church! I wish you a happy year. I am so horrified, that I do not know whether to continue preaching any longer to you, you rude brutes who cannot give even four half-pence ungrudgingly.” It was a disgrace, he says, that so far the fiscal authorities had been obliged to provide for the churches, the schools and the poor in the hospitals, whom it was the people’s duty as Christians to support. “Now that you are called upon to give four beggarly half-pence, you feel it a burden.” “Deceivers will come who will wax fat at your expense as happened formerly [in Catholic times]. I am sorry that you have arrived at such a glorious state of freedom, free from all tyrants and Papists, for, thankless brutes that you are, you don’t deserve this Evangelical treasure. Unless you mend your ways and act differently I shall cease to preach to you in order not to cast pearls before swine and to give what is holy to the dogs, and shall proclaim the Gospel to my real students who are the poor beggar-men. Formerly you gave so much to the wicked seducers [the Catholic clergy] and now ...!” Already, the year before, he had vigorously complained from the pulpit, though, as it would appear, all to no purpose: “Amongst those who hear the Word, faith is dull and charity has grown cold and hope is at an end, etc. There is no one who pities his brother’s distress. Once upon a time we gave a hundred, two hundred, five hundred, or even a thousand pieces of gold to the monks, canons or priests for the building of monasteries and churches. To-day no one can be found who will give a coin, let alone a piece of gold, for the poor. For this reason God sends His judgments on the world and curses the earth on account of the contempt for His Word and His Evangel; but we may look for yet worse things in the future.”

  Amongst the reminiscences of his journey to Italy, Luther retained a kindly memory of the charity as practised by the Catholics, particularly at Florence. We read in Lauterbach’s Diary on Aug. 1, 1538: “Then Luther spoke of charity in Italy and how the hospitals there were cared for. They are located in princely buildings, are amply supplied with food and drink, the servants are most diligent and attentive, the physicians very skilled, the bedding and clothing are perfectly clean and the beds are even painted. When a patient is brought in, he has at once to strip, an inventory of his clothes is made in the presence of a notary and they are then kept carefully for him. Then he is dressed in a white shirt and put in a nice painted bed with clean sheets, and after a little while two physicians are at his bedside; servants come and bring him food and drink in perfectly clean glass goblets, which they do not touch even with a finger, carrying everything on a tray. Even the greatest ladies come there, muffled up completely so as to be unrecognisable, in order to serve the poor for some days, after which they return to their homes. At Florence I have seen what great care is bestowed on the hospitals. Also on the foundling homes where the children are admirably installed, fed and taught, are all dressed alike and in the same colour and treated in a right fatherly way.”

  5. Other Innovations in Religious Doctrine

  The absence of any logical system in Luther’s theological and moral views is so far from being denied by Protestants who know his theology that they even reproach Luther’s opponents for expecting to find logic in him. No system, but merely “the thought-world of a great religious man” is, so they say, all that we may look for in his works; it is true that he had a “general religious theory,” but it was “faulty, in its details not seldom contradictory, and devised for a practical and polemical
object.” “Luther was no dogmatic theologian or man of system,” hence his individual sayings must not always be treated as though they were parts of a system.

  There can be no doubt that this is a defect in a teacher who comes forward as the founder of a denomination and as the restorer of Christian doctrine, and who, in his quality of “Prophet of the Germans,” declares: “Before me people knew nothing.” After all, precision and coherence of doctrines form a test of their truth.

  In reality the facts of the case are only indicated in a veiled way in the Protestant admissions just recorded. The truth is, as the reader has already had many an occasion to see, that, with Luther, one assertion frequently invalidates the other. Even in the field of moral teaching we find him at utter variance with himself, and his contradictions become particularly glaring as soon as he passes from theory to practice. Here it is easy to seize the “consummate contradictions of his theology,” of which a present-day Protestant theologian ventures boldly to speak; we may also subscribe to what this same writer says, viz. that Luther hardened his heart against certain consequences of his own religious principles. (Cp. , 447; vol. ii., , etc.)