Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Thus any reformer seeking to improve the Church’s condition had necessarily to face this task first of all. — Many other moral requirements arising out of the then state of society had, however, also to be borne in mind.

  It was necessary to counteract, by laying stress on what had been handed down, the false subjectivism and universal scepticism which the schools of philosophy had let loose on the world; also to oppose the cynicism, lack of discipline and love of destruction which characterised Humanism, by infusing into education the true spirit of the Church. Both these tasks could, however, be accomplished only by men filled with respect for tradition who while on the one hand broad-mindedly accepting the new learning, i.e. without questioning or distrusting reason and its rights, on the other hand possessed the power and the will to spiritualise the new culture. The disruptive tendency of the nations, the counterpart in international politics of the prevalent individualism, required to be corrected by laying stress on the underlying common ground. The undreamt-of enlargement of the Church through the discovery of new lands had to be met by organisations, the members of which were filled with love of self-denial and zeal for souls. At the same time the materialism, which was a consequence of the great increase of wealth brought from foreign lands, had to be checked. To oppose the alarming growth of Turkish power it was necessary to preach self-sacrifice, manly courage and above all Christian unity amongst those in power, amongst those who in former times had sallied forth against the East strong in the feeling of being one family in the faith. A still worse foe to Christian society was to be found in moral discouragement and exhaustion; there was need of a new spirit to awaken the motive force of religious life and to stir men to a more active use of the means of grace.

  If we compare the moral aims and motives which inspired Luther’s reformation, with the great needs of the times, as just described, we cannot fail to see how far short he fell of the requirements.

  Most of the aims indicated were quite strange to him. Judging from the standpoint of the olden Church, he frequently sought the very opposite of what was required. Some few instances may be cited.

  So little did Luther’s reformation tend to realise the sublime moral principle of the union and comradeship of the nations, that, on the contrary, he encouraged nationalism and separatist tendencies even in Church matters. Where his idea of a National Church prevailed, there the strongest bond of union disappeared completely. The more the authority of the Empire was subverted by the separatists, by religious Leagues and violent inroads of princes and sovereign towns within the Empire, the more the idea of unity, which at one time had been so great a power for good, had to suffer. He complained that the nations and races were as unfriendly to each other as devils. But for him, the rude Saxon, to abuse all who dwelt outside his borders in the most unmeasured terms, and to pour out the vials of his wrath and vituperation on the Latin nations because they were Catholic could hardly be regarded as conducive to better harmony. When he persistently declared in his writings and sermons that the real Turks were to be found at home, or when he fanned the flames of fraternal hatred against the Papists within the Fatherland, such action could scarcely promote a more effectual resistance to the danger looming in the East. The Bible, according to him, was to serve as the means of uniting the people of God. He flung it amongst the people at a time when everything was seething with excitement; yet he himself, in spite of all his praise of Bible study, was moved to execrate the results. It seemed, so he declared, as though it had been done merely “in order that each one might bore a hole where his snout happened to be.”

  As to subjectivism, the dominant evil of the age, he himself carried it to its furthest limits, relentlessly condemning everywhere whatever did not appeal to him and exalting his personal views and feelings into a regular law; subjectivism pervades and spoils his whole theology, and, in the domain of ethics, puts both personality and conscience on a new and very questionable basis. The subjective principle as used by him and exalted into an axiom, might be invoked equally by any religious faction for its own ends. We need only recall Luther’s theory of the lonely isolation of the individual in the matter of faith.

  Again, if that transition period between mediæval and modern times was suffering from moral and religious exhaustion and was inclined to be pessimistic concerning spiritual goods, and if, for its moral reform, what was needed was a leader deeply imbued with faith in revelation, able by the very strength of his faith to arouse the world of his day, and to inspire the lame and timid with enthusiasm and delight in the ancient treasures of religion — then, again, one is forced to ask whether such a man as Luther, even apart from his new and erroneous doctrines, had the requisite strong and overbearing devotion to supernatural truths? Is it not Luther who speaks so often of the weakness of his faith, of his doubts and his inward trials, and who, in order to reassure himself, declares that everyone, even the Apostles, the martyrs and the saints, were acquainted with the like?

  Not only did he not fight against pessimism, but, as the years went by, he even built it into a truly burdensome system. Towards the end of his life, owing both to his theories and to his experiences, he became a living embodiment of dejection, constituting himself its eloquent advocate. His view of the history of the kingdom of Christ was the gloomiest imaginable. Everywhere he saw the power of the devil predominant throughout the whole course of the world’s history.

  Not only is everything in the world outside of Christ Satanic, but even the ancient people of God, chosen with a view to the coming Redeemer, according to Luther, “raged and stormed” against the faith. But “the fury of the Jews” was exceeded by the “malice” which began to insinuate itself into the first Church not very long after its foundation. What the Jews did was “but a joke and mere child’s play” compared with the corruption of the Christian religion by means of “human ordinances, councils and Papistry.” Hardly had the light enkindled by Christ begun to shine before it gradually flickered out, until lighted again by Luther. In the East prevailed the rule of the Turks, those devils incarnate, whilst the West groaned under the Papacy, which far exceeds even the Islam in devilry.

  His pessimism sees the origin of the corruption in the Church in the fact, that, already in the first centuries, “the devil had broken into Holy Scripture and made such a disturbance as to give rise to many heresies.” To counteract these the Christians surrendered themselves to human ordinances; “they knew of no other way out of the difficulty than to set up a multitude of Councils side by side with Scripture.” “In short, the devil is too clever and powerful for us; everywhere he is an obstacle and a hindrance. If we go to Scripture, he arouses so much dissension and strife that we grow sick of the Word and afraid to trust to it. Yet if we rely on human councils and counsels, we lose Scripture altogether and become the devil’s own, body and soul.” This evil was not solely due to setting up human ordinances in the place of Scripture, but also to the preference shown in theory to works which arose when people saw, that “works or deeds did not follow” from the preaching of the Apostles, “as they should have done.” “Hence the new disciples set to work to improve upon the Master’s building and proceeded to confuse two different things, viz. works and faith. This scandal has been a hindrance to the new doctrine of faith from the beginning even to the present day.”

  From all this one would rather gather that the fault lay more in the nature of Christianity than in the devil.

  Luther’s pessimistic tendency also expresses itself in the conviction, that it was the “gruesome, frightful and boundless anger of God” that was the cause of the desolation of Christendom during so many centuries, though he assigns no reason for such anger on the part of God.

  His gloomy view of the world, exercising an increasing domination over him, led him to take refuge in fatalistic grounds for consolation, which, according to his wont, he even attributed to Christ who had inspired him with them. Haunted by his diabolical visions he finally became more deeply imbued with pes
simism than any present-day representative of the pessimistic philosophy.

  “Here you are living,” so he writes to one of his friends, “in the devil’s own den of murderers, surrounded by dragons and serpents. Of two things one must happen; either the people become devils to you, or you yourself become a devil.”

  Formerly he had looked forward with some courage and confidence to the possibility of a change. But even his courage, particularly at critical junctures, for instance, at the Coburg and during the Diet of Augsburg, more resembled the wanton rashness of a man who seeks to set his own fears at defiance. At any rate his peculiar form of courage in faith was not calculated to give a fresh stimulus, amid the general relaxation and exhaustion, to religious enthusiasm and the spirit of cheerful self-sacrifice for the highest aims of human life. On the other hand, his success was largely due to the discouragement so widely prevalent. We meet with a mournful echo of this discouragement in the sayings of certain contemporary Princes of the Church, who seem to have given up everything for lost. Many who had been surprised and overwhelmed by the sudden bursting of the storm were victims of this depression.

  Luther not only failed to direct the unfavourable tendencies of the age into better channels, but even to some extent allowed himself to be carried away by them.

  Even so strong a man as he, was keenly affected by the spirit of the age. In some respects it is true his work exercised a lasting effect on the prevalent currents, but in others he allowed his work to be dominated by the spirit then abroad. To the nominalistic school of Occam he owed not only certain of his doctrines but also his disputatious and subversive ways, and his method of ignoring the general connection between the truths of faith and of making the most of the grounds for doubt. Pseudo-mystic influences explain both his subjectivism and those quietistic principles, traces of which are long met with in his writings. Humanism increased his aversion to the old-time scholasticism, his animosity to the principles of authority and tradition, his contempt for all things mediæval, his lack of appreciation for, and unfairness to, the religious orders no less than the paradox and arrogance of his language. A strain of coarse materialism runs through the Renaissance. In Luther, says Paulsen, “we are reminded of the Renaissance by a certain coarse naturalism with which the new Evangel is spiced, and which, in his attacks on celibacy and the religious life, occasionally leads Luther to speak as though to abstain from carnal works was to rebel against God’s Will and command.” To the tendency of the Princes to exalt themselves Luther yielded, even at the expense of the liberties and well-being of the people, simply because he stood in need of the rulers’ support. The spirit of revolt against the hierarchy which was seething amongst the masses and even among many of the theologians, and which the disorders censured in the Gravamina of the various Diets had brought almost to the point of explosion, carried Luther away; even in those writings which contemporaries and aftercomers were to praise as his greatest achievement and, in fact, in his whole undertaking in so far as it involved separation from Rome, he was simply following the trend of his time.

  8. The Church Apart of the True Believers

  Luther’s sad experiences in establishing a new Church led him for several years to cherish a strange idea; his then intention was to unite the true believers into a special band and to restrict the preaching of the Gospel to these small congregations which would then represent the real Church.

  This idea of his of gathering together the true Christians has already been referred to cursorily elsewhere, but it is of such importance that it may well be dealt with somewhat more in detail.

  Luther’s Theory of the Church Apart prior to 1526

  On the whole the idea which Luther, previous to 1526, expressed over and over again as clearly as could be desired and never rejected later, viz. of uniting certain chosen Christians — the true believers — in a “congregation apart” and of regarding the remainder, i.e. the ordinary members of the flock which followed him, or popular Church as it was termed, as a mere lump still to be kneaded, gives us a deep insight into the development which his conception of the Church underwent and into his opinion of the position of his congregations generally. The idea was an outcome more of circumstances than of reflection, more a fanciful expedient than a consequence of his theories; thus it was that it suffered shipwreck on the outward conditions which soon showed that the plan was impossible of realisation. It really originated in the moral disorders rampant in the new Church, particularly at Wittenberg. So few of those who followed him allowed their hearts to be touched by the Evangel, and yet all, none the less, claimed not merely to be called Evangelicals but even to share in the Supper. Luther saw that this state of things was compromising the good name of the work he had started.

  After the refusal of the Princes and nobles to listen to his appeal to amend the state of Christendom, he determined to take his stand on the congregational principle. He fondly expected that, thanks to the supposed inward power of reform in the new communities, all his proposals would soon be put into execution, the old system of Church government swept away and a new order established more in accordance with his views. Hence in the writing to the magistrates and congregation of Prague, “De instituendis ministris ecclesiæ” (Nov., 1523), which, without delay, he caused to be translated into German, he strove to show, how, everywhere, the new Church system was to be established from top to bottom by the selection of pastors by members of the congregation filled with faith (“iis qui credunt, hæc scribimus”). According to this writing, the Visitors and Archbishop yet to be chosen by the zealous clergy, were to live only for the sake of the pastors and the congregations, whom they had to better by means of the Word. The faithful congregations “will indeed be weak and sinful” — Luther had no hope of setting up a Church of the perfect — but, “seeing they have the Word, they are at least not ungodly; they sin indeed, but, far from denying, they confess the Word.” “Luther’s optimism,” says Paul Drews, “saw already whole parishes converted into congregations of real Christians, realising anew the true Church of the Apostolic ideal.”

  In the same year, 1523, on Maundy Thursday, he for the first time spoke publicly, in a sermon delivered at Wittenberg, of the plan he had long cherished of segregating the “believing” Christians from the common herd. This was when publishing a new rule on the receiving of the Supper, making Penance, or at least a general confession of sin, a condition of reception. In future all were no longer to be allowed to approach the Sacrament indiscriminately, but only those who were true Christians; hence communion was to be preceded by an examination in faith, i.e. by the asking of certain questions on the subject. The five questions, and the answers, which were printed with a preface by Bugenhagen, practically constituted an assurance of a sort to the dispensers of the Sacrament that the communicants approached from religious motives and that they received the Body and Blood of Christ as a sign of the forgiveness of their sins.

  “It must be a faith,” says Luther in this sermon, “which God works in you, and you must know and feel that God is working this in you.” But did it come to a “serious self-examination you would soon see how few are Christians and how few there would be who would go to the Sacrament. But it might be arranged and brought about, as I greatly wish, for those in every place who really believe to be set apart and distinguished from the others. I should like to have done this long ago, but it was not feasible; for it has not been sufficiently preached and urged as yet.” Meanwhile, instead of “separating” the true believers (later on he speaks of private sermons for them to be preached in the Augustinian minster) he will still address his discourse to all, even though it be not possible to know “who is really touched by it,” i.e. who really accepts the Gospel in faith; but it was thus that Christ and the Apostles had preached, “to the masses, to everyone; ... whoever can pick it up, let him do so.... But the Sacrament ought not thus to be scattered broadcast amongst the people in the way the Pope did.”

  In the “Formula missæ” from
about the beginning of Dec., 1523, he again speaks of the examination of the communicants, and adds that it was enough that this should take place once a year, while, in the case of educated people, it might well be omitted altogether; the examination by the “bishop” (i.e. the pastor) must however extend also to the “life and conduct” of the communicants. “If he sees a man addicted to fornication, adultery, drunkenness, gambling, usury, cursing or any other open vice he is to exclude him from the Supper unless he has given proof of amendment.” Moreover, those admitted to the Sacrament are to be assigned a special place at the altar in order that they may be seen by all and their moral conduct more easily judged of all. He would, however, lay down no commands on such matters, but leave everything, as was his wont, to the good will of free Christian men.

  The introduction of the innovation was, moreover, to depend entirely on the consent of the congregation, agreeably with his theory of their rights. This he said in a sermon of Dec. 6, 1523. It was probably in that same month that the plan was tried.

  These preliminary attempts at the formation of an assembly of true Christians were no more crowned with success than his plan for the relief of the poor by means of the so-called common box, or his efforts to establish a new system of penalties. Hence he declared, that, owing to the Wittenbergers’ want of preparation, he was obliged to put off its execution “until our Lord God forms some Christians.” For the time being “we have not got the necessary persons.” In 1524 he told them that “neither charity nor the Gospel could make any headway amongst them.” In the Wittenberg congregation he could “not yet discern a truly Christian one.” He nevertheless permitted the whole congregation to take its share, when, in the autumn of 1523, the town-council appointed Bugenhagen to the office of parish-priest; this he did agreeably with his ideas concerning the rights of the congregation.