Durants' S o C
Vol.VI The REFORMATION
Pgs. 371 - 377
LUTHER’S THEOLOGY
Though his theology was founded with trusting literalness on the Scriptures, his interpretation unconsciously retained late medieval traditions. His nationalism made him a modern, his theology belonged to the Age of Faith. His rebellion was far more against Catholic organisation and ritual than against Catholic doctrine; most of this remained with him to the end. Even in his rebellion he followed Wyclif and Huss rather than any new scheme: like theirs his revolt lay in rejecting the papacy, the councils, the hierarchy, and any other guide to faith than the Bible; like them he called the pope Antichrist; and like them he found protection in the state. The line from Wyclif to Huss to Luther is the main thread of religious development from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century. Theologically the line was anchored on Augustine’s notions of predestination and grace, which in turn were rooted in the Epistles of Paul, who had never known Christ. Nearly all the pagan elements in Christianity fell away as Protestantism took form; the Judaic contribution triumphed over the Greek; the prophets won against the Aristotle of the Scholastics and the Plato of the humanists; Paul, in the line of the Prophets rather than that of the Apostles -- transformed Jesus into an atonement for Adam, the Old Testament overshadowed the new; Yahweh darkened the face of Christ.
Luther’s conception of God was Judaic. Basic in him was the old picture of God the avenger, and therefore of Christ as the Final Judge. He believed, without recorded protest that God had drowned nearly all mankind in a flood, had set fire to Sodom, and had destroyed lands, peoples, and empires, with a breath of His wrath and a wave of his hand. Luther reckoned “that few are saved, infinitely many are damned.” The mitigating myth of Mary as intercessor dropped out of the story, and left the Last Judgement in all its stark terror for naturally sinful man. Meanwhile God had appointed wild beasts, vermin, and wicked women to punish men for their sins. He accepted magic and witchcraft as realities and thought it a simple Christian duty to burn witches at the stake. Most of these ideas were shared by his contemporaries, Catholic or Protestant. The belief in the power and ubiquity of devils attained in the sixteenth century an intensity not recorded in any other age; and his preoccupation with Satan bedevilled much of Protestant theology.
He took heaven and hell for granted, and believed in an early end to the world. He described a heaven of many delights, including pet dogs “with golden hair shining like precious stones”-- a genial concession to his children, who had expressed concern over the damnation of their pets. He spoke as confidently as Aquinas about angels as bodiless and beneficent spirits. He accepted fully the medieval conception of devils wandering about the earth, bringing temptation, sin, and misfortune to men, and easing man’s way into hell. All the Teutonic folk-law about the poltergeist , or noise making spirit was apparently credited by Luther at its face value. Snakes and monkeys were favourite incarnations of the devil. The old notion that devils could lie with women and beget children seemed plausible to him; in one such case he recommended that the resultant child should be drowned.
He wrote, “No one is by nature Christian or pious . . . the world and the masses are and always will be unchristian . . the wicked always outnumber the good.” Even in the good man evil actions outnumber the good , for he cannot escape from his nature; as Paul said ,” there is none righteous, no, not one.”
“We are children of wrath,” Luther said; “and all our works , intensions and thoughts are nothing at all in the balance against our sins. So far as good works go, everyone of us would merit damnation “. By good works Luther meant especially those forms of ritual piety recommended by the Church -- fasting, pilgrimages, prayers to the saints, Masses for the dead, indulgences , processions, gifts to the Church; but he also included all works , “what ever their character.” He did not question the need for charity and love for a healthy social life, but he felt that even a life blessed with such virtues could not earn an eternity of bliss. Only the redeeming sacrifice of Christ -- the suffering and death of the Son of God -- could atone for man’s sins; and only belief in that divine atonement can save us from hell. As Paul said to the Romans “ If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in thine heart that God has raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” It is this faith that ‘justifies‘ -- makes man ‘just’ despite his sins, and eligible for salvation. Christ Himself said: He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, but he that believeth not, shall be damned.” It is with comment about Faith and Belief in the sacrifice of Christ that Luther sought to comfort sinners. He wrote “Seek out the society of your boon companions, drink, play, talk bawdy, and amuse yourself. One must sometimes commit a sin out of hate and contempt for the devil, so as not to give him the chance to make one scrupulous over mere nothings; if one is too frightened of sinning, one is lost ... oh, if I could find some really good sin that would give the devil a toss!”
Such lusty and humorous ’abiter dicta’ invited misconstruction. Some of Luther’s followers interpreted this as condoning fornication, adultery, murder. However, by faith Luther meant not merely intellectual assent to a proposition, but vital, personal self committal to a practical belief; and he was confident that complete belief in God’s grace, given because of Christ’s redeeming death, would make a man so basically good that an occasional frolic with the flesh would do no lasting harm. Faith would soon bring the sinner back to spiritual health. “Good works” he said, “do not make a good man, but a good man does good works.” And what makes a man good? Faith in God and Christ. By divine predestination the elect are chosen for eternal happiness, the rest are left graceless and damned to everlasting hell.
This is the acme of faith, to believe that God, who saves so few and condemns so many, is merciful; He is Just, and yet has made us necessarily doomed to damnation, so that He seems to delight in tortures of the wretched, and to be more deserving of hatred than of love. If by any effort of reason I could conceive how God, who shows so much anger and iniquity, could be merciful and just, there would be no need of faith.
So Luther, in his medieval reaction against a paganising Renaissance Church, went back not only to Augustine but to Tertullian : ‘Credo quia incredibile‘; It seemed to him a merit to believe in predestination because it was, to reason, unbelievable. Yet it was, he thought , by hard logic that he was driven to this incredibility. The theologian who had written so eloquently about the “freedom of Christian man” now (1525), in a treatise “de servo arbitrio,” argued that if God was omnipotent He must be the sole cause of all actions, including man’s; that if God is omniscient He foresees everything, and everything must happen as He has foreseen it; that therefore all events , through all of time have been predetermined in His mind, and are forever fated to be.
Luther concluded, like Spinoza, that man is as free “as a block of wood, a rock, a lump of clay, a pillar of salt.” More strangely still, the same divine foresight deprives the angels , nay, God Himself, of freedom. He too, must act as He has foreseen; His foresight is His fate.
A lunatic fringe interpreted this doctrine ’ad libitum.’ Much of these conclusions lay annoyingly implicit in medieval theology, and were deduced by Luther from Paul and Augustine with irrefutable consistency. He seemed willing to accept medieval theology if he might disown the Renaissance Church; he could tolerate the predestination of the multitudinous damned more easily than the authority of scandalous tax gathering popes.
As for the sacraments , viewed as priestly ceremonies conferring divine grace; Luther severely reduced their role. He believed they involve no miraculous powers, and their efficacy depends not on their forms and formulas, but on the faith of the recipient.
Luther’s doctrine of the sacraments, his replacement of the Mass by the Lord’s Supper, and his theory of salvation by faith rather than good works, undermined the authority of the clergy in northern Germany. In Lutheran Europe civil courts became the only courts , secular power the only legal power. Secular rulers appointed Church personnel, appropriated Church property, took over Church schools and monastic churches. Theoretically Church and state remained independent; actually the Church became subject to the state. The Lutheran movement, which thought to submit all life to theology, unwittingly, unwillingly, advanced that pervasive secularisation which is the basic theme of modern life.
