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.[117] 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.[118] 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.[119] 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.[120] 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.[121] 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.[122] 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: “Against the little Saints.” (See below, p. 69.)

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,[123] 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.[124]

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.[125] 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.[126]

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.[127]

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 (p. 38), “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.

Returning to the Commentary on the Psalms, we find that therein Luther sometimes makes characteristic statements about himself. On one occasion, doubtless in a fit of depression, he pours out the following effusion: “If Ezechiel says the eyes wax feeble, this prophecy is largely fulfilled at the present time, as I perceive in myself and in many others. They know very well all that must be believed, but their faith and assent is so dull that they are oppressed as by sleep, are heavy of heart, and unable to raise themselves up to God.” Such states of lukewarmness were to be banished by means of fear, but woe to him who permits the feeling of self-righteousness to take the place of the weariness, for “there is no greater unrighteousness than excessive righteousness.”[134] In the latter words he seems to be again alluding to the “little Saints” and the ostensibly self-righteous members of his Order.

His ill-humour is partly a result of his dissatisfaction with the disorders which he knew or believed to exist in his immediate surroundings, in the Order, and in ecclesiastical life generally. He frequently speaks of them with indignation, though from the new standpoint which he was gradually taking. “We live in a false peace,” he cries, and fancy we can draw on the “Treasure of the merits of Christ and the Saints.” “Popes and bishops are flinging about graces and indulgences.”[135] Unmindful of the consequences, he diminished the respect of his youthful hearers for the authority of the Church. As to the religious life, he was wont to speak as follows: “Here come men of religion and vaunt their confraternities and indulgences at every street corner only to get money for food and clothing. Oh! those begging friars! those begging friars! those begging friars! Perhaps you are to be excused because you receive alms in God’s name, and preach the word and perform the other services gratis. That may be, but see you look to it.”[136] These words in the mouth of one who was himself a member of a mendicant Order, for this the Augustinian Hermits undoubtedly were, amounted to an attack on the constitution of his own Congregation.

In his Commentary on the Psalms he frequently at one and the same time rails at the “self-righteous” and “holy by works” and at the opposition party in his Order, so that it is not easy to distinguish against whom his attacks are directed. Already at this period he shows a certain tendency to under-estimate the value of Christian good works and to insist one-sidedly on the power and efficacy of faith and on the application of the merits of Christ.

Still, taken in their context, none of these passages furnish any decisive proof of a deviation from the Church’s faith. They forebode, indeed, Luther’s later errors, but contain as yet no explicit denial of Catholic doctrine. In this we must subscribe to Denifle’s view, and admit that no teaching actually heretical is found in the Commentary on the Psalms.[159]

The Protestant scholar last mentioned has dissected the Commentary on the Psalms in detail; particularly did he examine its connection with the philosophical and mystical system sometimes designated as Augustinian Neo-Platonism.[173] It may be left an open question whether his complicated researches have succeeded in proving that in the Commentary—interpreted in the light of some of the older sermons and the marginal glosses in the Zwickau books—Luther’s teaching resolves itself into a “somewhat loose and contradictory mixture of four elements,” namely, Augustinian Neo-Platonism, an Augustinian doctrine on sin and grace, a trace of scholastic theology, and some of the mysticism of St. Bernard.[174] His researches and his comparison of many passages in the Commentary on the Psalms with the works of Augustine, especially with the “Soliloquia” and the book “De vera religione,” have certainly shown that Luther was indebted for his expressions and to a certain extent for his line of thought, to those works of Augustine with which he was then acquainted. He had probably been attracted by the mystical tendency of these writings, by that reflection of Platonism, which, however, neither in St. Augustine’s nor in Luther’s case, as Hunzinger himself admits, involved any real acceptance of the erroneous ideas of the heathen Neo-Platonism. Luther was weary of the dry Scholasticism he had learned at the schools and greedily absorbed the theology of the Bishop of Hippo, which appealed far more to him, though his previous studies had been insufficient to equip him for its proper understanding. His own words in 1532 express his case fairly accurately. He says: “In the beginning I devoured rather than read Augustine.”[175] In a marginal note on the Sentences of Peter Lombard he speaks, in 1509, of this Doctor as “numquam satis laudatus,” like him, he, too, would fain send the “moderni” and that “fabulator Aristoteles” about their business.[176]

The obscure and tangled mysticism which the young author of the Commentary on the Psalms built up on Augustine—whose spirit was far more profound than Luther’s—the smattering of Augustinian theology, altered to suit his controversial purposes, with which he supplemented his own scholastic, or rather Occamistic, theology, and the needless length of the work, make his Commentary into an unattractive congeries of moral, philosophical and theological thoughts, undigested, disconnected and sometimes unintelligible. Various causes contributed to this tangle, not the least being the nature of the subject itself. Most of the Psalms present all sorts of ideas and figures, and give the theological and practical commentator opportunity to introduce whatever he pleases from the stores of his knowledge. With some truth Luther himself said of his work in a letter to Spalatin, dated December 26, 1515, that it was not worth printing, that it contained too much superficial matter, and deserved rather to be effaced with a sponge than to be perpetuated by the press.[177] There is something unfinished about the work, because the author himself was still feeling his way towards that great alteration which he had at heart; as yet he has no wish to seek for a reform from without the Church, he not only values the authority of the Church and the belief she expounds, but also, on the whole, the learned tradition of previous ages with which his rather scanty knowledge of Scholasticism made him conversant. This, however, did not prevent him attacking the real or imaginary abuses of the Schoolmen, nor was his esteem for the Church and his Order great enough to hinder him from criticising, rightly or wrongly, the condition and institutions of the Church and of monasticism.

The statement made by him in 1537, that he discovered his new doctrine at the time he took his degree as Doctor, i.e. in 1512, cannot therefore be taken as chronologically accurate. His words, in a sermon preached on May 21, were: “Now we have again reached the light, but I reached it when I became a Doctor ... you should know that Christ is not sent as a judge.”[178]

3. Excerpts from the Oldest Sermons. His Adversaries

In the sermons which Luther, during his professorship, preached at Wittenberg in 1515-16, we notice the cutting, and at times ironical, censure with which he speaks to the people of the abuses and excesses which pervaded the exercise of the priestly office, particularly preaching. He is displeased with certain excesses in the veneration of the Saints, and reproves what he considers wrong in the popular celebration of the festivals of the Church and in other matters. These religious discourses contain many beautiful thoughts and give proof, as do the lectures also, of a rich imagination and great knowledge of the Bible. But even apart from the harsh denunciation of the conditions in the Church, the prevailing tone is one of too great hastiness and self-sufficiency, nor are the Faithful treated justly. It was not surprising that remarks were made, and that he was jeered at as a “greenhorn” by the listeners, who told him that he could not “convert old rogues” with that sort of thing.[179]

He complains bitterly, and with some show of reason, that at that time preaching had fallen to a very low ebb in Germany. The preachers too often treated of trivial and useless subjects, enlarged, with distinctions and sub-distinctions, on subjects belonging to the province of philosophy and theology, and lost themselves in artificial allegorical interpretations of the Bible. In their recommendation of popular devotions they sometimes went to extremes and sometimes lapsed into platitude. There was too little of the wealth of thought, power and inward unction of Brother Bertold of Regensburg and his school to be found in the pulpits of that day. Even in Luther’s own sermons during these years we meet with numerous defects of the time, barren speculations in the style of the nominalistic school through which he had passed, too much forcing and allegorising of the Bible text, and too much coarse and exaggerated declamation. To be pert and provoking was then more usual than now, and owing to his natural tendency he was very prone to assume that tone. The shyness which more recent biographers and admirers frequently ascribe to the young professor is not recognisable in his sermons. That he ever was shy can only be established by remarks dropped by Luther in later life, and, as is well known, such remarks cannot be taken as reliable sources of information concerning his early years. Were Luther’s later account correct, then we should be forced to ascribe to the young preacher and professor a burning desire to live in the solitude of his cell and to spend his days quite apart from the world and the debates and struggles going forward in the Church outside. Yet, in reality, there was nothing to which he was more inclined in his sermons than to allow his personal opinions to carry him to violent polemics against people and things displeasing to him; he was also in the habit of crediting opponents more friendly to the Church than he, or even the Church itself, with views which they certainly did not hold. Johann Mensing, one of his then pupils at the University of Wittenberg, speaks of this in words to which little attention has hitherto been paid: “I may say,” he writes, “and have often heard it myself, that when Luther had something especially good or new to say in a sermon he was wont to attribute to other theologians the opposite opinion, and in spite of their having written and taught just the same, and of his very likely taking it from them himself, to represent it as a precious thing he had just discovered and of which others were ignorant; all this in order to make a name for himself, like Herostratus, who set fire to the temple of Diana.”[180] We may also mention here a remark of Hieronymus Emser. After saying that Luther’s sermons were not those of a cleric, he adds: “I may say with truth that I have never in all my life heard such an audacious preacher.”[181] These, it is true, are testimonies from the camp of Luther’s opponents, but some passages from his early sermons will show the tone which frequently prevails in them.

Already in the Christmas sermons of 1515 Luther does not scruple to place himself, as it were, on the same footing with the prophets, wise men and those learned in the Scriptures, whose persecution Christ foretold, more particularly among the last of the three groups. Even then his view was unorthodox.

“There are some,” he says, “who by the study of Holy Scripture form themselves into teachers and who are taught neither by men nor directly by God alone.” These are the learned in the Scriptures. “They exercise themselves in the knowledge of the truth by meditation and research. Thus they become able to interpret the Bible and to write for the instruction of others.” But such men are persecuted, he continues, and, as the Lord prophesied of the prophets and wise men and scribes that they would not be received, but attacked, so is it also with me. They murmur against my teaching, as I am aware, and oppose it. They reproach me with being in error because “I preach always of Christ as the hen under whose wings all who wish to be righteous must gather.” Thus his ideas with regard to righteousness must have been looked upon as importunate or exaggerated, and, by some, in all probability, as erroneous. He immediately launches out into an apology: “What I have said is this: We are not saved by all our righteousness, but it is the wings of the hen which protect us against the birds of prey, i.e. against the devil ... but, as it was with the Jews, who persecuted righteousness, so it is to-day. My adversaries do not know what righteousness is, they call their own fancies grace. They become birds of prey and pounce upon the chicks who hope for salvation through the mercy of our hen.”[182]

Such rude treatment meted out to those who found fault with him (and one naturally thinks of clergy and religious, perhaps even of his very brethren, as the culprits), the denouncing them from the pulpit as “birds of prey,” and his claim to lay down the law, this, and similar passages in the sermons, throw a strong light on his disputatious temper.

In a well-ordered condition of things the Superiors of the Augustinians or the diocesan authorities would have intervened to put a stop to sermons so scandalously offensive; at Wittenberg, however, the evil was left unchecked and allowed to take deeper root. The students, the younger monks and some of the burghers, became loud and enthusiastic followers of the bold preacher. Staupitz was altogether on his side, and, owing to him, also the Elector of Saxony. The Prince was, however, so little of an authority on matters theological that Luther once writes of him that he was “in things concerning God and the salvation of the soul almost seven times blind.”[183]

Luther’s notes on his Sunday sermons during the summer of 1516—a time when he had already expressed his errors quite plainly in his lectures on the Epistle to the Romans—afford us a glimpse of an acute controversy. At this time his sermons dealt with the first Commandment.