Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Luther also helped in a certain sense to set the worldly authorities on their own feet and to make them more independent. This was an outcome of his violent struggle against the influence previously exerted over the State by the olden Church, or to speak more accurately of his assault on the Church as such, albeit it was attended by the other eminently unfortunate results. In the course of history, according to the Divine plan, new and useful elements not seldom spring up from evil seed. Owing to a too close union of the two powers and the assumption of many worldly functions by the Church, the representatives of the latter were too often exposed in their work to a not unjustifiable criticism. The Church was charged with being inefficient in her management of outward business and this detracted from the respect due to her spiritual functions; unnecessary jealousy was aroused and social developments in themselves desirable were frequently retarded. Thus, though the storm let loose by Luther wrought great devastation, yet it is not to be regretted that since then many temporal forces now transferred from the Church to the State have been set to work with satisfactory results such as might otherwise not have been attained. In some places certainly they had come into operation long before this, but speaking generally, things in this respect were still in a backward state.

  Important factors for judging of Luther’s social work are two ideas on which he laid great stress and which we have already discussed. One is the separation of the Church from the world, which, albeit, in very contradictory fashion, he attempted to carry out; the other is his plea that the Church, which he sought to divest of all legislative power, possessed no authority to make binding laws. What has been said already may here be summed up anew with a few more quotations to the point.

  We have in the first place the separation of the spiritual and supernatural. Luther’s work did great harm in the sphere of the supernatural and, so far as his influence extended, alienated society from it. His doctrine, particularly concerning the state of man, grace and good works was of such a nature as in reality to withdraw society from the supernatural atmosphere, however much he might extol the “knowledge of the free grace of God in Christ,” which he claimed had been won by his exertions.

  The detachment of the supernatural life expressed itself also in a systematic, jealous exclusion of any worldly meddling in the spiritual domain, for the rule of the Gospel must, according to Luther, be something quite distinct from the worldly rule. By his principles and his writings he materially contributed to the secularisation of society and the State. According to him Christ simply says without any reservation: “My kingdom is no business of the Roman Emperor.” The spiritual rule must be as far apart from the temporal rule “as heaven is from earth.”

  “What is most characteristic of the kingdom of grace,” so writes E. Luthardt, one of the best-known Lutheran moralists, who, however, fails to point out its want of clearness, “is the order of grace, whilst what is most characteristic of the kingdom of the world and the world’s life is the order of law; they are quite different in kind nor do they run on the same lines but belong to entirely different worlds. To the one I belong as a Christian, to the other as a man; for we live at once in two different spheres of life, and are at the same time in heaven and on earth.” “Each one must keep within his own limits,” and “not make of the Gospel outward laws for life in the world, for Jesus gave His law only for Christians, not for the rest.”

  Luthardt rightly appeals to Luther’s words: “This is what the Gospel teaches you: It has nothing to do with worldly things, but leaves them as God has already disposed them by means of the worldly authorities.” “The kingdom of Christ has nothing to do with outward things, but leaves them all unaltered to follow their own order.” “In God’s kingdom in which He rules through the Gospel there is no going to law, nor have we anything to do with law, but everything is summed up in forgiveness, remission and bestowing, and there is no anger or punishment, nothing but benevolence and service of our neighbour.” As to the temporal matters, “there the lawyers are free to help and advise how things are to be.” “If anyone were to try and rule the world according to the Gospel, just think, my good friend, what the result would be. He would break the chains and bonds that hold back the wild and savage beasts.” — It is true that he here altogether overlooks the fact that religion has, on the contrary, to help in governing the world by her moral laws, restraining the “wild and savage” elements by means of her laws, her authority and her means of grace; just as when speaking above of the two spheres of life in which man is placed he forgets that we are endowed with but one conscience and one responsibility, viz. that of the Christian, which is inseparable from man as he is at present constituted.

  “Now, praise be to God, all the world knows,” says Luther, of his sundering of the two spheres of life, “with what diligence and pains I have laboured and still labour to distinguish between the two offices or rules, the temporal and the spiritual, and to keep them, apart; each one now is instructed as to his own work and kept to it, whereas in Popery it was all so entangled and in such confusion that no one kept within his own powers, dominion and rights.”

  Protestants have found the essential difference between Protestantism and Catholicism to consist in the fact, that, according to Luther’s directions, Protestantism separates “religion and theology, faith and knowledge, morality and politics, Christianity and art,” whereas Catholicism, according to the motto of Pius X, seeks to “renew all things in Christ.” “We know that revelation has only an inward mission to the individual soul; the Catholic believes in its public mission for universal civilisation.” “We should fear for the purity of our faith and no less for morality and civilised order should these domains ever be christianised.”

  The result of forbidding the “spiritual rule” ever to encroach on the temporal domain was so to enfeeble the precepts of ethics as to deprive them of any real authority for making themselves felt as a power in secular government.

  With Luther everything is constructed without any basis of authority; he proffers, as he is fond of saying, “opinions and advice,” and even this he does without a trace of theory or method; as for binding regulations he has none; nor has he any Church behind him that can set up an obligatory ethical standard; he recognises indeed the universal priesthood, but no Church with any paramount authority in spiritual things, no hierarchy and no social institution such as the Catholic Church is. This is the chief reason why his moral instructions lack any definite and binding force over people’s minds. The great mass of mankind must be guided by clear and fixed rules, counsels which address themselves to man’s good-will are in themselves practically useless for the direction or guidance of the masses, constituted as they are. The Gospel, moreover, in spite of what Luther says to the contrary, though it brings the glad tidings of salvation and forgiveness, also contains a large number of strict moral precepts; the Divine Founder of the Church, in His wisdom, also equipped her with full power to issue, on the lines traced out by Himself, the commands called for by the needs of every age. She disposes of spiritual penalties and has the right to excommunicate offenders when this is necessary to emphasise her laws.

  With Luther the last resource lay in the system of the State-Church. The “Christian authorities” became the authorities of the congregations (see below, ff.). Thus the founder of the new religion frequently requires the rulers who had rallied to his system to make use of their power in order to lend their sanction and authority to the ethical regulations he gave to his followers, and which he himself was unable to enforce.

  Here we shall only consider one class of cases where it was of great importance to him to see his “opinion and advice” followed. According to him, as Luthardt himself admits in his “Ethik Luthers,” “The authorities were to serve and promote the cause of the Evangel.... From this Luther went on, however, to give advice which really was at variance with his fundamental views. It is true when he demands that the rulers should not suffer any such sects as deny the rights, etc.,
of the authorities, he was merely imposing on them the fulfilment of one of the duties of the State, but when he requires the rulers to make use of their powers to check the scandal of heresy and false worship, which was the most horrible and dangerous form of scandal; or, when heresy had been proved from Scripture, to forbid its preaching; ‘to insist on the true worship, to punish and forbid false doctrine and idolatry and to risk everything rather than allow themselves and their people to be forced into idolatry and falsehood’; or ‘to banish from the land those who deny such articles as the Divinity of Christ and the redemption,’ etc.; or again, when two opposing parties confront each other, as, for instance, the Lutherans and the Papists, to decide according to Scripture and forbid the party that failed to agree with Scripture to preach, — all these and similar matters are plainly based on the assumption that the ruler had a right to form an independent opinion as to whether a doctrine was or was not in accordance with Scripture, an assumption which Luther, as a matter of fact, strongly deprecates in theory. When Luther speaks in this way he is taking it for granted that he has to do with a Christian ruler, who as such does not merely perform his office of ruler like the heathen Emperor or the Grand Turk, but is influenced by the Gospel and recognises the Word of God.”

  Expressed in different words Luthardt’s ideas would amount to this: According to Luther it is imperative that the rulers should be good Lutherans and accept the Evangel and the Word of God as he taught it. No other Christian ruler may venture to put the above measures in force, for the truth is he is no Christian at all.

  This leads us to look closer into Luther’s ideas on the secular authority and the State-Church.

  2. The State and the State Church

  Most Protestant writers become very eloquent and go into great detail when dealing with the main ideas Luther is supposed to have expressed on the State and on social order.

  He maintained, so they assert, and impressed strongly on all ages to come, that the purpose of the State was to keep the peace and uphold the right against the wicked by means of legislation and penalties: “Magistratus instrumentum, per quod Deus pacem et iura conservat.” This temporal peace was the best earthly possession and comprised all temporal blessings; in point of fact the “true preaching office” should, so he declared, bring peace, but with the greater number “this is not the case,” so that the authority of the ruler was necessary for the maintenance of outward peace. “This worldly government,” according to him, “preserves temporal peace, rights and life,” indeed he says it makes wild beasts into men and saves men from becoming wild beasts. The true Evangelical doctrine, unlike the earlier one, leads to the secular government being regarded as “the great gift of God and His own gracious order,” notwithstanding that all authority was instituted by God on account of the sin that reigns in man. Human reason and experience, and also the Holy Ghost, must teach the authorities how to fulfil their duty. They must, so far as this is possible, work for the common welfare of their subjects in this world. Since, according to Luther, they must punish what is evil in their subjects’ external behaviour and take care that “all public scandal be banished and removed,” their task seems to trench on morals and on religion. Good sovereigns instruct their people concerning temporal things, “how to manage their homes and farms, how to rule the land and the people, how to make money and secure possessions, how to become rich and powerful,” further, “how we are to till the fields, plough, sow, reap and keep our house.” In short the ruler must interest himself in the needs of his subjects as “though they were his very own.” The worldly rulers must provide for the support of their subjects, and particularly for the poor, the widows and orphans, and extend to them their fatherly protection.

  Other fine sayings of Luther’s on this subject and on the duties he assigns to the rulers are instanced in plenty.

  The ruler “holds the place of a father, only that his sway is more extensive, for he is not merely the father of one family, as it were, but of as many as there are inhabitants, citizens or subjects in his country.... And because they bear this name and title and look upon it as in all honour their greatest treasure, it is our duty to respect them and regard them as our dearest, most precious possession on earth.” Luther insisted in the strongest terms on the duty of obedience, more particularly after his experiences during the Peasant War. He emphasises very strongly, in opposition to the fanatics, that the secular Courts must rule and their authority be recognised, and also that the oath must be taken when required.

  He even tells the rebels: “God would rather suffer the rulers who do what is wrong than the mob whose cause is just. The reason is that when Master Omnes wields the sword and makes war on the pretence that he is in the right, things fare badly. For a Prince, if he is to remain a Prince, cannot well chop off the heads of all, though he may act unjustly and cut off the heads of some.” For he must needs retain some about him, continues Luther with a touch of humour; but when the mob is in revolt then “off go all the heads.” “Even where a ruler has pledged himself to govern his subjects in accordance with a constitution— ‘according to prearranged articles’ — Luther will not admit that it is lawful to deprive him of his authority should he disregard his oath.... No one has the right or the command from God to enforce a penalty in the case of the authorities.” But things ought not to reach such a pass in the case of the prince’s government. Obedience should make everything smooth for him. He cherishes and provides for all, as many as he has subjects, and may thus be called the father of them all, just as in old days the heathen called their pious rulers the fathers and saviours of the country.

  These ideas are not, however, peculiar to Luther. They were current long before his time and had been discussed from every point of view by Christian writers who, in turn, had borrowed them from antiquity.

  In all this, which, furthermore, Luther never summed up in a theory, all that is new is his original and forcible manner of putting forward his ideas. “It is hardly possible to argue,” says Frank G. Ward, one of the latest Protestant writers in this field, “that his view of the duty of the State contained anything very new.... The opinion that the State had an educational duty was held even in classical antiquity.” If it was held in Pagan times, still more so was this the case in the Christian Middle Ages. It is to classical antiquity that we just heard Luther appeal when he referred to the “pater patriæ.” He had become acquainted in the Catholic schools with the ideas of antiquity purified by Christian philosophy.

  Still, there is much that is really new in Luther’s views on the State and the rulers which does not come out in the passage quoted above; what is new, however, far from being applauded by modern Protestant judges, is often reprehended by them.

  As the accounts we had to give elsewhere were already so full it will not be necessary again to go into details; it is, however, worth while again to emphasise the conclusions already arrived at by calling attention to some data not as yet taken into consideration.

  In the first place one thing that was new was the energetic application made by Luther in his earlier years of his peculiar principle of the complete separation of world and Church. The State, or, rather, ordered society (for there was as yet no political State in the modern sense), was consequently de-Christianised by him, at least in principle, at least if we ignore the change which soon took place in Luther himself (see below, f.). The proof of this de-Christianisation is found in his own statements. In his writing of 1523, “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt,” he expressly told the rulers of the land that they had no concern with good people and “that it was not their business to make them pious,” but that they were only there to rule a world estranged from God, and to maintain order by force when the peace was disturbed or men suffered injustice. Amongst real Christians there would, according to Luther, be no secular rulers. Even when Luther, in this tract of which he thought so highly, is instructing a pious Christian ruler on his duties, he has nothing to say of his duty to protect and further the Church,
though in earlier days all admonitions to the princes had insisted mainly on this.

  His view of the two powers at work in the social order was new, particularly as regards the spiritual sphere and the position of those holding authority in the Church. The believing Christians in Luther’s eyes formed merely a union of souls, without any hierarchy or a jot of spiritual authority or power; there is in fact only one power on earth qualified to issue regulations, viz. the secular power; the combination of the two powers, which had formed the basis of public order previously, was thrown over, any spiritual ruler being out of place where all the faithful were priests. There is but a “ministry” of the word, conferred by election of the faithful, and its one duty is to bring the Gospel home to souls; it knows nothing of law, vengeance or punishment. The ministry of the Word must indeed stand, but is by no means a supervising body, in spite of the “neo-Lutheran conception of the office,” as some Protestant theologians of the present day disapprovingly call it.

  Carl Holl, in his “Luther und das landesherrliche Kirchenregiment” (1911), says with some truth: “Luther knows as little of a Christian State as he does of a Christian shoemaking trade”; “Our life here below is only Christian in so far as the individuals concerned are Christians. Their sphere of action is not prescribed to Christians by Christianity but rather by the divine order of nature.” — Hence the whole public congregational system, so far as it needs laws to govern it, must remain on a purely natural basis.