THE ROCKS OF FALSE MYSTICISM

1. Tauler and Luther

John Tauler, the mystic and Dominican preacher of Strasburg, whom Luther so favoured, was quite Catholic in his teaching; to attribute to him, as has been done, any Pantheistic ideas is to do him an injustice, and it is equally wrong to imagine that he forestalled Luther’s notions regarding grace and justification. Yet his fanciful and suggestive mode of expression, his language which voiced, not the conceptual definiteness of Scholasticism, but the deep feelings of the speaker, often allows of his words being interpreted in a way quite foreign to his real meaning. It was just this depth of feeling and this obscurity which attracted Luther. As his letters show, he breathed more freely while perusing Tauler’s writings, because they responded to his natural disposition and his moods, not the least point in their favour being the absence in them of those hard-and-dry philosophical and dialectical mannerisms which were hateful to him. Without even rightly understanding it, he at once applied the teaching of this master of mysticism to his own inward condition and his new, growing opinions; he clothed his own feelings and views in Tauler’s beautiful and inspiring words. His beloved mother-tongue, so expertly handled in Tauler’s sermons, was at the same time a new means of binding him still more firmly to the mystic. In Tauler the necessity of the complete surrender of the soul to the action of God, of indifference and self-abandonment, is strongly emphasised. To free oneself as far as possible of self; to renounce all confidence in oneself in so far as this implies self-love and the pride of the sinful creature; to accept with waiting, longing, suffering confidence God’s almighty working, this, with Tauler as with all true mystics, is the fundamental condition for a union through love with the most Perfect Being. Luther, in his false interpretation of Tauler, came to dream of a certain false passivity on man’s part, which he then expanded into that complete passivity which accompanies the process of justification. He thought that Tauler repudiated the doing of good works in his own sense. He fancied that in him he had an ally in his fight against the so-called self-righteous and holy-by-works. He quite overlooked the contrary exhortations to the practice of good works and all observances of the Church which the great mystic had so much at heart.[408]

Tauler frequently speaks of the night of the soul, of the darkness in which the natural man must place himself on the way from death to life and through the cross to light; by this he means the self-humiliation which is pleasing to God, by which man fills himself with the sense of his own nothingness, and so prepares for the incoming of God into his innermost being. He often insists that the Creator, by means of the suffering and cruel inward desolation which He sends His elect, brings about that state of night, cross and death, to prove and refine the soul in order to prepare it for an intimate union with Himself. Such passages Luther referred to the states of fear and fright from which he so frequently suffered, possibly also to his want of joy in his vocation, and the state of unrest which, as he complains to his brother monk, George Leiffer, owing to his surrendering himself too much to his own excessive cleverness, pressed heavily upon him.[409] When, during the warfare he had to wage on behalf of his new doctrine, his inward unrest increased, and at times almost mastered him, he took refuge still more eagerly in the tenets of the mystic, striving to calm himself with the idea that his pangs of conscience and his mental anguish were merely a preparation for the strong, joyous faith which must spring up in his soul and those of his followers as a pledge of justification. His very doubts and difficulties became to him, with the help of his misunderstood mysticism, a sign that he was chosen for the highest things, and that God would lead him and all to peace through the new doctrine. It is in connection with his teaching concerning the night of the soul that he most frequently quotes Tauler at the commencement of his public struggle, whereas, before that, he had been wont to bring him into the field only against the so-called self-righteous, or against Scholasticism.[410]

It was known at that time that he had become a pupil of Tauler, whom he frequently quoted, but few of his adversaries seem to have recognised the above-mentioned psychological connection. Dungersheim of Leipzig on one occasion, in 1519, rightly holds up before him the teaching and example of Tauler, and tells him he might have learnt from him how useful it was to accept from others warnings and criticisms; he gloried in having learnt from Tauler many more spiritual doctrines than from any other man, but he really only understood one thing well, namely, how to kick against the pricks to his own hurt.[411]

One of the books used by Luther in his youth and preserved in the Ratsschul-Library at Zwickau is a copy of Tauler’s sermons in the 1508 Augsburg edition with Luther’s annotations made about 1515.[417] The notes prove how strongly his active imagination was caught up into this new world of ideas, and how, with swelling sails, he set out for the port he thought lay beyond the mystic horizon.

Frequently in this period of strange spiritual transition Luther’s manner of speaking of the dissolving of the soul in God, and the penetrating of all things by the Divine, borders on Pantheism, or on false Neo-Platonism. This, however, is merely owing to his faulty mode of expression. He does not appear to have been either disposed or tempted to leave the path of Christianity for actual Pantheism or Neo-Platonism, although the previous example of Master Eckhart and of others shows us, that mysticism has not infrequently allured even great and talented minds on to these rocks. That he should, as already shown, have welcomed without any sign of scruple the actual destruction of all free will for good must, in part, be explained by his lack of a thorough theological and philosophical training. How different might have been his development, given his mental character, had he, instead of devoting his attention in his unripe years to the teachings of mysticism, steeped himself, for instance, in the “Summa Theologica” of Thomas of Aquin, that brightest and greatest mind of the Middle Ages! After making himself thoroughly at home in such a theology he would then have been qualified to summon to his assistance the better sort of mysticism, in which he would have found much agreeing with his stamp of mind and which would have allowed him to rise to a still higher enjoyment of the true and good. If then he was not content to stop short at Tauler and the “German Theology,” there was the Dominican Henry Suso also at his service, the godly author of writings such as “The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom,” which has been called the “finest fruit of German mysticism” (Denifle). He shows in how inspiring a union pious immersion in God can be combined with theological clearness of thought. Many others who flourished after the time of Suso, in Germany and elsewhere, and who distinguished themselves as practical and at the same time theoretical mystics by the depth of their feeling and their theological culture would have served as his examples. Such were Johann Ruysbroek, of Groenendael near Brussels, Gerard Groot of Deventer, the founder of the Brothers of the Common Life, Henry of Louvain, Ludolf the Carthusian, Gerson of Paris—with his excellent Introduction to Mysticism, on the lines of the so-called Areopagite—Thomas À Kempis, the pious guide, and, among enlightened women, Lidwina of Schiedam in Holland, Catherine of Bologna and Catherine of Genoa. The names mentioned, so far as they belong to the domain of German mysticism, point to a fertile religious and literary field in Luther’s own country, as attractive by profundity of thought and beauty of representation as by depth of feeling and heartiness of expression. It was a cruel misunderstanding—which, however, is now breaking down more and more, even in the case of Protestant writers—to represent the ideas of German mysticism as precursors of Luther’s later doctrine.

This vein of true mysticism remained sealed to Luther. By attempting to create a theology of his own with the fantastic notions which he read into Tauler, he fell into the mistake against which Thomas of Aquin had already sounded a warning note in his “Summa Theologica.” Without a safe guiding star many minds are led astray by the attraction of the extraordinary, by the delusions of an excited fancy or the influence of disordered inclinations, and consider that to be the work of Divine grace which is merely deception, as experience shows.[427]

As an expression of the spiritual turmoil going on in Luther, we may quote a passage from a sermon of January, 1517. Speaking of the gifts of the three kings he says: “the pure and choice myrrh is the abnegation with which we must be ready to return to absolute nothingness, to the state before creation; every longing for God is there relinquished (!), and likewise the desire for things outside of God; one thing only is desired: to be led according to His good pleasure back to the starting-point, i.e. to nothingness. Ah, yes, just as before God called us into existence we were nothing, desired nothing, and existed only in the mind of God, so we must return to that point, to know nothing, to desire nothing, to be nothing. That is a short way, the way of the cross, by which we may most speedily arrive at life.”[428] Whether a sermon was the right place for such, at best purely incomprehensible, an outburst, is doubtful. Luther, the idealist, was then disposed to pay but little attention to such practical considerations. In the eyes of many of his pupils and friends, however, mystical discourses of this sort may have lent him the appearance of a pious, spiritually minded man.

With regard to the “way of the cross” and the “theology of the cross,” which he began to teach as soon as he had lost himself in the maze of mysticism, he explains himself more clearly in the Disputations which he organised at Wittenberg, and which will be dealt with below.[429]

2. Effect of Mysticism on Luther

The study of mysticism was not altogether disadvantageous to Luther, for it proved of use to him in various ways.

First, as regards his grasp of spiritual subjects and their expression in words, Tauler’s simple and heartfelt manner taught him how to clothe his thoughts in popular and attractive dress. The proof of this is to be found in his writings for the people and in several of his more carefully prepared sermons, particularly in the works and sermons of the first period when the mystical influence was still predominant. Also with regard to the common body of Christian belief, so far as he still held fast to the same, several excellent elements of Catholic mysticism stood him in good stead, notwithstanding his inward alienation. The intimate attachment of the mystics to Christ and their longing expectation of salvation through the Lord alone, sentiments which made an immense impression on his soul, notwithstanding the fact that he understood them in a one-sided and mistaken fashion, probably had their share in preserving in him to the very end his faith in the Divinity of Christ and in the salvation He wrought. They also led him to esteem the whole Bible as the Word of God, and to hold fast to various other mysteries which some of the Reformers opposed, for instance, the mysterious presence of Christ in the Sacrament, even though they did not prevent him from modifying these doctrines according to his whim. While Luther retained many of the views rooted in the faith and sentiment of earlier ages, the Rationalism of Zwingli was much more ready to throw overboard what did not appear to be sanctioned by reason; this came out especially in the controversy on the Lord’s Supper. The reason of this was that Zwingli had been trained in the school of a narrow and critical Humanism; of mysticism in any shape or form he knew nothing at all.

Among the advantages which Luther derived from mysticism we cannot, however, reckon, as some have done, his later success against the fanatics; this success was not a result of his having overcome their false mysticism by the true one. By that time he had almost completely given up his mysticism, whether true or false. He certainly met the attacks of the fanatics and Anabaptists by appealing to his own mystical experiences, but that was really a mere tactical, though none the less effective, manoeuvre on his part, which, with his ready tongue and pen, he was able to put to excellent account. “Who spoke of spirits?” he says; “I also know the spirit and have had experience of the spirit; I am able, yea, am called, to reveal their delusions.” And in the eyes of many he may certainly have been considered, on account of the “mystical” terrors he had suffered, and to which he frequently referred in public, to be specially fitted to unmask the false spiritualism of his opponents. As a matter of fact, his fears and his mysticism had nothing to do with the real discerning of spirits; they never brought him light, but only darkness. The truth is that, at the time of his contest with the fanatics, he had become more sober, had a clear, practical eye for the mischief of the movement, and regarded it as the highest duty of self-preservation to stamp out the flame of revolt against his patrons and his own teaching. We shall see, however, that the fanatics were, in a certain sense, the children of Luther’s own spirit.

The real good which Luther may have derived from the study of mysticism was far more than counterbalanced by the regrettable results of his notions concerning the “pure myrrh” of passivity, and the desire for nothingness, which at one and the same time involved him in a real labyrinth, and raised his estimation of his own mission to an enormous and dangerous height. He came to fancy himself far superior not only to the Occamists, but to the whole of the secular and regular clergy, the “swarm of religious and priests,” even to all the theologians, and particularly to the Scholastics, those “sow theologians,” who knew nothing of what he was conversant with.

His mysticism had already paved the way for his later belief with regard to his own Divine call to establish the new teaching; it was supported by his views of God’s guidance of the unconscious soul; what he would formerly have regarded as a mistaken road and due to diabolical inspiration was now labelled a godly act.

True and real mysticism could not take root in him because, to start with, the necessary predisposition, concerning which the other mystics and Tauler are agreed, was wanting, viz. above all humility, calmness and that holy indifference, which allows itself to be led by God along the path of the rules of its calling without any ulterior, private aims; peaceableness, composure of mind and zeal in prayer were not his. What mysticism left behind in Luther was scarcely more than the fragrance of its words, without any real fruit. What took root and grew in him was rather the hard wood from which lances are made, ready for every combat that may arise. His mysticism itself gives the impression of being part of the battle which his antagonism to the Occamists led him to give to Scholasticism. Those who contradicted his new ideas—even his brother monks, like the Erfurt philosophers and theologians—appeared to him to be opposed on account of their Scholasticism. The most effective way of escaping or overcoming them seemed to him the replacing of the older theology by another, in which, together with Holy Scripture and St. Augustine, mysticism should occupy a chief place.

Luther embraced the idea, which permeates Tauler’s works, of the painful annihilation of self-will and of all man’s sensual inclinations, not in order to mortify his own self-will and sensuality by obedience to the rules of his Order and humble submission to the practices of the Church, but the better to make his delusive disregard for the zealous performance of good works appear high and perfect to his own mind and in that of others.

One should be ready, so he asserts in the defence of his theses against Prierias, to renounce all hope in any merit or reward to such an extent that “if you were to see heaven open before you, you would nevertheless, as the learned Dr. Tauler, one of your own Order [Prierias was also a Dominican], says, not enter unless you had first consulted God’s Will as regards your entering, so that even in glory you may not be seeking your own will.”[436] In Tauler there is, it is true, something of the sort,[437] though it does not authorise Luther to assume the standpoint he does in his theory of resignation. Luther in his Commentary on Romans, as already stated, goes so far as to preach resignation to eternal damnation, and even to demand of us a desire to be damned should it please God to decree it for us (see below, vi. 9). All this for the ostensible purpose of excluding the slightest appearance of self-love. “But how,” a modern author asks, writing with a knowledge of the better Christian mysticism, “can there be less merit in striving after the final consummation in the next life which is offered and recommended to us by the Divine favour, and from which final salvation is inseparable? How then can the ideal state of the mystic consist in indifference to his perfection and salvation, to heaven or hell?”[438] “Indifference with regard to the attainment of the highest, uncreated, eternal, endless Good can never be postulated.”[439] But Luther thinks he can justify this and other errors with the help of Tauler and his own mysticism.

But he did not, and could not, use Tauler as a weapon against the Schoolmen. All he could do was to magnify the loss which these had suffered through not being acquainted with such a theology as Tauler’s, “the truest theology.” Tauler, as a matter of fact, was not opposed to Scholasticism, indeed, the pith of his exhortations rests upon well-grounded scholastic principles.

By the time his second and complete edition of the “Theologia Deutsch” appeared, the printing of which was finished on June 4, 1518, Luther knew with certainty that this booklet was not by Tauler. Nevertheless, in the Preface he heaps exaggerated praise upon it, gives it a place beside the Bible and St. Augustine, and declares that his own teaching, on account of which Wittenberg is being assailed, possesses in it a real bulwark: “Only now” has he discovered that, before his time, “other people” thought just the same as he. Here then we see the alliance which he has entered into with mysticism, now placed completely at the service of his rediscovered Evangel; the sympathy which had attracted him to the German mystics during the last few years here reveals its true character and is led to its overdue triumph. In a certain sense mysticism was always to remain harnessed to his chariot.

On the other hand, Luther very soon gave up pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the mystic whose teaching had spread from the East over the whole of the West. At first, following public opinion, he had esteemed him very highly, the more so since he had taken him for a disciple of the Apostles; but, subsequently to the Disputation at Leipzig, where the Areopagite was urged against him, he shows himself very much opposed to him. According to Luther, he does not allow Christ to come to His rights, he grants too much to philosophy and is, of course, all wrong in his teaching concerning the hierarchy of the Church.[440] Luther, however, always remained true to St. Bernard, with whom he had become acquainted, together with Gerson, in his spiritual reading at the monastery. From St. Bernard, as likewise from Tauler, he borrowed many mystic ideas, yet not without at the same time forcibly misinterpreting them and ascribing to the former, ideas which are altogether foreign to his mind.[441] Gerson’s theologico-mystical introduction, which Luther cites in his glosses on Tauler, did not experience any better treatment at his hands,[442] while Bonaventure, the mystic whom he once prized, came under suspicion on account of his theological teaching, even before the Areopagite.[443]

On the other hand, he retained his esteem for Tauler till the end.

Some very remarkable references which Luther makes to Tauler’s teaching are in connection with the troubles of conscience which dogged the steps of the Wittenberg Doctor from his first public appearance. These will be mentioned later, together with the means of allaying such torments of soul, which he gives in his “Operationes in Psalmos” (1519-21), borrowing them from misunderstood passages of Tauler.

We conclude with another passage from the “Operationes” in which, following Tauler, he gives expression to that favourite idea of his, which like a star of ill-omen presided at the rise of his new theology. Psalm xi., according to him, is intended to demonstrate the “righteousness by faith” against “the supporters of holiness by works and the deceptive appearance of human righteousness.” This is a forced interpretation going far beyond his own former exposition of the Psalm in question. “To-day,” he says—with an eye on the so-called holy-by-works, or iustitiarii—“there are many such seducers, as Johann Tauler also frequently warns us.”[444] Of course, here again, what he has in mind are the well-known admonitions of Tauler, to trust in God more than in our own acts of virtue, though he takes them quite wrongly as implying the worthlessness of works for salvation. A Protestant authority here meets us at least half-way: “Tauler certainly did not hold in so accentuated a fashion as Luther the antithesis between grace and works, for he allows that ‘good works’ bring a man forward on the way of salvation.”[445]

Luther, since beginning his over-zealous and excited perusal of Tauler’s writings, presents to the calm observer the appearance of a man caught up in a dangerous whirl of overstrain. Even in the first months this whirl of a mystic world brought up from the depth of his soul all the accumulated sediment of anti-theological feeling and disgust with the state of the Church. The enthusiasm with which Luther speaks of the “Theologia Deutsch” and Tauler, shows, as a Protestant theologian has it, “that the mysticism of the late Middle Ages had intoxicated him.” “It is clear that we have here a turning-point in Luther’s theology.”[446]

Of mighty importance for the future was his unfortunate choice, perhaps due to his state of mind, just in that period of storm and stress, to deliver lectures at the University on the Epistle to the Romans. Through his Commentary on this Epistle he set a seal upon his new views directed against the Church’s doctrine concerning grace, works and justification.