3. The Church-Unseen, its Origin and Early History
His doctrine of the Church may in many respects be regarded as the key-stone and centre of the rest of Luther’s theology.
It is practically important in that it affords a clue to anyone desirous of ascertaining to which of the competing religious bodies he should belong. It was usually to this article on the Church that those who afterwards returned to Catholicism appealed in vindication of their step. It was also the practice of Catholic writers, in their controversies with Luther, to appeal to the doctrine of the one Church which has never erred in dogma in order to convict him more speedily of the guilt of his separation. All of them started from the old definition, according to which the Church is the visible commonwealth of the faithful, founded by Christ on Peter, the Rock, which confesses the same Christian belief and unites in the same Sacraments under the guidance of its lawful pastors, in particular of the successors of St. Peter.
Luther himself was fully aware of the supreme importance of this doctrine; he frequently enough brings his opponents on the scene “crying Church, Church!”[1081] Among the Papists, he says, they do nothing but shriek Church, Church, Church, and this is the chief obstacle to reunion.[1082] “Hence there is indeed need that we should see what the Holy Christian Church is. If it is the clergy and their mob, then the devil has won and we two, God and His Word, are the losers.”[1083] “The Pope quotes this text [John xiv. 17: ‘The spirit of truth shall remain with you’] strongly and impressively.… They have become so certain of their cause that they take their stand on it as on a wall of iron.… This we ourselves must believe and say, viz. that the Holy Ghost is with the Church which is certainly on earth and will remain.”[1084] But was Luther’s Church a visible or an invisible one?
Invisibility of Luther’s Church
Bearing in mind the religious compulsion practised by Luther, the question would seem already answered. His practice involved the existence of an outward ecclesiastical authority with outward rules, a congregation to which it was impossible to belong without submitting to the doctrine of a visible head or corporation. Of the visible nature of this Church there can be no question. It is with this tangible authority that he confronts the Anabaptists, for instance when he says: “The presumption of these fanatics is unbearable, for they altogether repudiate the authority of the Church and will have it all their own way.”[1085] The best-grounded maxims of the best teachers are despised by them, so he complains, and they only esteem the opinions they themselves have rummaged for in Scripture! “Yet great heed should be paid to the Church.”[1086]
Nevertheless, according to Luther’s own views which had not changed much since 1519, the Church is in reality invisible.
The Church is not an outward, tangible institution, with a divinely appointed spiritual government and direction, such as it had been to Catholics through all the ages; rather it is the ghostly congregation of true believers known to Christ alone, Who alone is their head, guide and teacher. Men holding “office” in the Church there must indeed be, but only in order to preach and to dispense the sacraments; any spiritual authority with full powers for legislating and guiding the faithful is non-existent.[1087] It is the “true” faith and the possession of the “right” sacraments that constitute the Church. It is accordingly clear to him that the Holy Church in which we are to believe, must be a “ghostly, not a bodily one,” “for what we believe,” so he proceeds, “is not bodily but ghostly. The outward Roman Church we can all of us see, hence she cannot be the true Church in which we believe which is a congregation or assembly of the saints in faith; but no one can see who is a saint or who has the faith.” This he said in his “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome” (1520).[1088]
“The Church is altogether in the spirit,” so he again says in the following year, “she is altogether a spiritual thing.”[1089] “Christ,” so he says later, “works in the spirit so that it is hardly possible to smell His Church and bishops from afar, and the Holy Ghost behaves as though He were not there”; but that Church which is so close at hand “that it is possible to lay hold on her,” as is the case with the Popish Church, is only the Church of the devil.[1090] “Who will show us the Church,” he asks, “seeing that she is hidden in the spirit and is only believed in, just as we say: ‘I believe in one Holy Church.’”[1091] “The Church is believed in but she is not seen, and for the most part she is oppressed and hidden, under weakness, crosses and scandals.”[1092] In short, as a Lutheran theologian puts it, “he is speaking merely of a Holy Church or congregation whose real complement of Saints is not apparent, and which is therefore termed invisible.”[1093] Nor could he speak otherwise, for the absence of a divinely appointed hierarchy, and likewise his principle of the free examination of Scripture, could not but lead him to assume an invisible Church which lives only in the hearts of those who share the faith and the possession of the Holy Ghost.
Although, as the theologian in question points out, in Luther’s idea of the Church visible elements are not lacking, e.g. preaching and the sacraments, yet the actual congregation of Saints is visible to God alone; indeed the Church would still be there even should her only members consist of “babes in the cradle.”[1094] For instance, according to him, the Church before his day comprised very few people, and those unknown, who kept the Gospel undefiled and thus preserved the Church; some “elect souls must needs have come back, at least on their death-beds, to the true path.”[1095]—“Such persons [inspired by the Holy Ghost] there must always be on earth, even though there should only be two or three, or just the children. Of the old there are, alas, but few. Such as do not belong to this class have no right to look upon themselves as Christians; nor are they to be consoled as though they were Christians by much talk of the forgiveness of sins and the Grace of Christ.”[1096]
Thus, in so far as the visible elements were recognised by Luther, Protestants are justified in teaching that Luther’s Church-Unseen was “not a mere idea or empty phantom”; if, however, they go on to say that, according to Luther, the Church is “the living sum total of all who are united in the Spirit,” one sees at a glance that, though, mentally, we can make a class of all who come under the category of “believers,” this implies no actual relation between such, and consequently no “Church” or real though invisible society.[1097]
The Marks of the Church. Gradual Disappearance of the Old Conception of the Church
It is a matter of common knowledge that the marks or “notæ” of the Church had been the subject of many disquisitions before Luther’s day. We may now inquire whether Luther himself also admitted the existence of these “marks,” by which the true Church of Christ might be known.
Though the admission of such marks seems incompatible with his theory of the Church-Unseen, Luther repeatedly seeks to prove the truth of his own Church and the falsehood of Catholicism by this means. Especially is this the case in his “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen” (1539).
Thus he asks: How can “a poor, blundering man know where to find this holy Christian folkdom [the Church]? For we are told that it is [to be found] in this life and on this earth … where it will also remain till the end of time.”[1098] This leads him to speak of the marks of the true Church.
“First of all the holy Christian people can be told by its having the Holy Word of God.” Luther forgets to say how the latter is to be recognised, though on this all depends; for he was far from being the only one who laid claim to possessing the pure Word of God. Hence many were not slow in pointing out how useless it was on his part to say: “Where you hear or see this Word preached, believed, confessed and acted upon, have no doubt that there, assuredly, must be the true ‘ecclesia sancta catholica,’ and the Holy Christian people, even though in number they be but few.”[1099] Nor did his theological opponents think any more highly of the other marks of the true Church which he sets up in the same work. They urged that the distinguishing marks should surely be clearer than what was to be distinguished, and patent and evident even to the unlearned. Concerning the marks set up by Luther, however, there was doubt even among those who had cut themselves adrift from Catholicism.
For instance, the second mark was “the Sacrament of Baptism where it is rightly taught and believed, and administered according to Christ’s ordinance.”[1100] But, among the Zwinglians and Anabaptists, baptism, so at least they claimed, was also rightly administered according to the ordinance of Christ; and, as for the Popish Church, Luther himself admits that she had always preserved baptism in its purity. Hence, here again, we have no clear, distinctive mark.
The other marks, according to Luther’s “Von den Conciliis,” were, thirdly, “the Sacrament of the Altar where it is rightly given, believed and received according to the institution of Christ”; and, fourthly, “the keys [forgiveness through faith] of which they make public use.” “Fifthly, the Church is known outwardly by her consecrating or calling of ministers of the Church, to the offices which it is her duty to fill.” Sixthly, “by her public prayer, praise, and thanks to God.” “Seventhly, the Christian people is recognised outwardly by the sacred emblem of the holy Cross since it has to suffer misfortune and persecution, all kinds of temptation and trouble—as we learn from the Our Father—from the devil, the world and the flesh; must be inwardly in pain, foolish and affrighted, and outwardly poor, despised, weak and sick.”[1101]
Bellarmine, the sharp-witted controversialist, and other polemics even earlier, dealt with these marks and showed their inadequacy. As regards the last mark Bellarmine, not unnaturally, expressed his wonder that Luther should have spoken of it, seeing that inward suffering, sadness and apprehension are of their very nature hidden things. Luther, however, hit upon this mark because he was accustomed to regard his “temptations” as a witness to the truth of his doctrine, and was convinced that the devil was causing them solely out of hatred for the truth.[1102] He thus carried his fancied experiences[1103] into his teaching on the Church, a fresh proof that his theology was the outcome rather of his inner life than of revealed doctrine. The idea that the Church was ever to be sick, weak, foolish and despised appealed to him all the more because his Evangel had not brought forth the good moral fruits he desiderated, and because he had vainly to struggle against the dissensions within his congregations and their abuse of the freedom of the Gospel.
It was this experience of his which led him to the fantastic plan already described of forming an “assembly of earnest Christians,” i.e. a Church-apart enrolled from the true believers who would then realise the idea of a Church even to the extent of having the power of excommunicating.
The seven marks of the Church were reduced to two in the Augsburg Confession of 1530, viz. pure doctrine, and true sacraments, and it is thus that they appear in the “Symbolic Books” of Lutheranism. On the other hand, Luther makes no appeal to the marks of the Church as given in the olden so-called Nicene Creed, “though all the olden Councils had insisted that it was these marks, particularly the attribute of ‘Apostolicity,’ which distinguished the Church from the sects.”[1104]
As a matter of fact the marks on which Catholic theologians laid stress, viz. the Church’s “oneness, holiness, Catholicity” and apostolicity furnished a striking answer to the question: Where is the Church? She is Apostolic because her connection with the Apostles has never been broken; Catholic because of her universal existence throughout the world; holy in her aims and means and in the practice of Christian virtue by the generality of her followers, and also on account of the special gifts of grace which have ever brightened her path through the ages; lastly, she is one, outwardly in being alone, and also inwardly, in the unity of her faith and belief, liturgy and sacraments, and in her character as a society in which a divinely appointed spiritual authority rules which the rest obey. In the latter respect the Church, to the Catholic mind, is even a “societas perfecta,” visible, moreover, to the whole world like the “city set on a hill” (Matt. v. 12) in which the Fathers of the Church indeed always saw an image of the Church;[1105] she is as a building built upon a rock, as a flock gathered round the shepherd, both of them comparisons which we owe to the Church’s Divine Founder.
It was not without reason that Luther was averse to any appeal to the four marks of the Church just referred to. What unity had he wherewith to confront that of Catholicism under its Pope? Apostolicity, as an historical union with Christ’s Apostles was so evidently wanting in his case that he declared that the doctrine he had come to preach had died out shortly after Apostolic times. Any claim to Catholicity in the usual sense of the word was not to be thought of for a moment. The only olden marks which he does not throw over is that of holiness. He here relies on the existence of holiness in the case of a few as being sufficient for his purpose.
Nevertheless, due justice must be done to the stress he is ever disposed to lay on the holiness of the Church. He practically makes all the other marks to centre in this, for he speaks of the seven marks mentioned above as the sevenfold “sanctuary whereby the Holy Ghost sanctifies Christ’s holy nation.”[1106]
“Even though it was impossible for him,” remarks Johann Adam Möhler, “to teach that the Church was to be regarded as a living institution in which men become holy, yet he sticks fast to the idea that she ought by rights to be composed of saints.… The inner Church [called by theologians the “soul” to distinguish it from the outward “body” of the Church] is everywhere in evidence, and the fact that no one is a true citizen of the heavenly kingdom if he belongs only outwardly to the Church and has not entered into the spirit of Christ and felt within himself its vivifying power, is pointed out [by Luther] in a way which merits all praise.”[1107]
Such true believers, according to Luther’s teaching, are so much the sole representatives of the visible Church that the wicked, the unbelieving, the hypocritical Christians who only expose her to the scorn and derision of her foes, do not really belong to the Church at all.[1108] They are members of the Church merely in name, but, in reality, are not Christians at all.[1109]
It was not, however, easy for him to shake off the true feeling he had inherited from youthful days, viz. that whoever wished to be pious and pleasing to God, must become so through the true Church. “Let us therefore pray in the Church,” so we hear him say, “let us pray with the Church and for her.”[1110] According to him the Church was the ghostly Eve taken from the side of Christ, a pure virgin and one body with Christ, great and splendid in God’s sight, the chief of His works, dear to Him, precious and highly esteemed in His sight, etc.[1111] Hence we find him re-echoing the beautiful words in which Catholic mystics had been wont to extol the Church and her “soul.”
Yet there is no doubt, that, in spite of all this, Luther had explained away the Church’s very essence.
It was indeed his tendency to spiritualise, and his favourite idea that true believers must be enlightened by God directly concerning His outward “Word” that helped him thus to explain away the Church. As for any outward doctrinal establishment or institutional Church having an authority of her own, no such thing existed. Thus the Church which Luther extols as so holy turns out to be something quite intangible—water that for want of a holder runs away and is lost. Even Köstlin admits this, though in guarded words: “Certain main problems which the Reformed view of the Church must necessarily face” “were only very insufficiently grasped and discussed” by Luther and his friends. Among such questions Köstlin includes some that touch the Church’s very essence: How far is purity of doctrine necessary in order to belong to the Church; how far are the old Creeds still professed by Protestantism obligatory or binding upon preachers; where, finally, does the freedom preached by Luther precisely end?[1112] But, in spite of all the lacunæ in his doctrine of the Church, Luther bitterly insists, that, outside the Church there can be no salvation.[1113] Nor did he even admit the usual Catholic limitation, viz. that those, who through no fault of their own are ignorant of the Church, may possibly be saved if their life has been otherwise good. Luther indeed, as already shown (p. 292), is of opinion that some olden Catholics may have been saved, if, in the end, they laid hold on Christ as Luther taught;[1114] he also opines that salvation had been brought to all “worthy men of every nation” who had died before the coming of Christ, through His preaching during His visit to Limbo;[1115] yet he does not believe that it was the Will of God that all men, whether within or outside the Church, should be saved.[1116]
After having in the above examined Luther’s conception of the Church, irrespective of its mode of growth, we may now turn our attention to the genesis and historical development of this conception.
Origin and Early Outbuilding of the New Idea of the Church
A curious psychological process accompanies the growth of Luther’s idea of the Church. We know that, even long after he had fallen a victim to his theory of justification by faith alone, he had still no thought of breaking away from the Church’s communion or of questioning the conception then in vogue of the Church. It was only when the olden Church refused to come over to his new doctrine and prepared to condemn it, that he decided, after great struggles within, to cut himself adrift, and it was in order to justify this step to himself and to vindicate it to the world that he gradually formed his new views on the Church. (Cp. above, vol. i., p. 321 ff.)
Characteristically enough we find a first trace of what was to come, in his sermon on the power of the Papal Ban, which he published in Latin in 1518 and in German in the following year. Here, of course, he had to deal with the question of the effects of the threatened excommunication; in so doing he reached the false proposition, censured amongst his 41 errors in the Bull Exsurge Domine of May 16, 1520: “Excommunications are merely outward penalties and do not rob a man of the Church’s common spiritual prayers.”[1117] Not long after, according to his wont, he went a step further. Among the condemned Theses we find the paradoxical one: “Christians must be taught to love excommunication rather than to fear it.”[1118]
At Dresden on July 25, 1518, when he was found fault with on account of his Wittenberg Sermon on Excommunication (which was then probably not yet known in its entirety), he seems to have shown scant respect for the supreme authority in the Church. Emser, his then opponent, writes expressly that Luther had declared he cared nothing for the Pope’s Ban.[1119]
Some weeks later, on Sep. 1, Luther himself wrote to Staupitz, his superior, that his conscience told him he was in the right and with the truth on his side; “Christ liveth and reigneth yesterday, to-day and for ever”; he also tells him, that, in his “Resolutions,” and in his replies to Prierias he had spoken freely, and in a language that would wound the Romanists, and that he was ready, nay anxious, to give the brassy Romans an even ruder German answer in the service of Christ, the Shepherd of the people. “Have no fear; I shall continue untrammelled my study of the Word of God without any fear of the citation [to Augsburg].”[1120]
During the negotiations in the presence of Cajetan at Augsburg we can see even more clearly how Luther stood under the spell of his idea, that the only Church was a spiritual one, and that, even should he break away from ecclesiastical authority by rising against the Ban, he would still remain in this Church.
It was after his return from Augsburg, during the stormy days when he appealed “from the Pope to a General Christian Council,” i.e. in the winter of 1518, that he discovered the true “Antichrist” who reigned at Rome.[1121] This discovery deprived him of the last vestige of respect for the authority of the Church and for her head.[1122] His own inward state when he made this discovery was one of curious turmoil. In his letter to Link, of Dec. 11, 1518, we hear him speaking of his commotion of mind, of new projects just on the point of birth which would show that, so far, he had hardly made a serious beginning with the struggle; he had a “premonition” then that Antichrist described by St. Paul (2 Thes. ii. 3 ff.) was seated in Rome where he behaved even worse than the Turk.[1123] At the beginning of 1519 with bated breath he announced to his friends the impending war on all the Papal ordinances.[1124]
Thus, even previous to the Leipzig Disputation, he must have busied himself with his new idea of the Church.
It was, however, only during the Disputation that, pressed hard by Eck, he was induced to deny openly the Primacy and to proclaim his belief in an invisible Church controlled by no authority.[1125] In the Disputation on July 4 and the following days, he attacked the divine institution of the Pope’s authority, asserted that even Œcumenical Councils could err, and, on July 6, declared that the Council of Constance had actually done so in rejecting the doctrine of Hus that there is “a Holy Catholic Church which is the whole body of the elect.”
In thus cutting the idea of the Church to his own measure, Luther had reached the Husite theory of the predestined as the sole members of the Church. “Luther found in this his own view of the Church, for, according to him, on the one hand there was no need of submission to Rome, and, on the other, only the real Christians and the elect were actual members of the Church.”[1126] In the “Resolutions,” which he published at the end of August immediately after the Disputation, he adheres to the statement that even Œcumenical Councils had erred and that, even on the most important questions of the faith. Still, strange to say, he does not think there is any reason for fearing that the Church had been forsaken by the Spirit of Christ, for by the Church was to be understood neither the Pope nor a Council.[1127] Here we have the basis of his new idea of the Church.… It is combined with another idea towards which he had long been drifting, viz. of seeing in Holy Scripture the sole source of faith.[1128] In the “Resolutions” he says: “Faith does not spring from any external authority but is aroused in the heart by the Holy Ghost, though man is moved thereto by the Word and by example.”[1129] Wherever Luther’s doctrine is believed, there is the Church.[1130]
The Papal Bull of 1520 condemned among the other selected theses of Luther’s, his attack on the Primacy and the Councils, though saying nothing of his doctrine of the Church, then still in process of growth. “The Roman Pope, the successor of Peter,” so the 25th of these condemned Theses runs, “is not the Vicar of Christ set over all the Churches throughout the whole world and appointed by Christ Himself in the person of St. Peter.” And the 29th declares: “It is open to us to set aside the Councils, freely to question their actions and judge their decrees and to profess with all confidence whatever appears to be the truth whether it has been approved or reproved of any Council.”[1131]
The originator of principles so subversive to all ecclesiastical order had perforce to reassure himself by claiming freedom in the interpretation of Scripture.
Hence, for himself and all who chose to follow him, he set up in the clearest and most decided terms the personal reading of the written Word of God, above all tradition and all the pronouncements of the teaching office of the Church; in this he went much further than he had done hitherto in the questions he had raised concerning justification, grace, indulgences, etc. It is easy to understand why it was so necessary for him to claim for himself a direct enlightenment by the Spirit of God in his reading of the Bible;[1132] in no other way could he vindicate his daring in thus setting himself in opposition to a Church with a history of 1500 years. At the same time he saw that this same gift of illumination would have to be allowed to others, hence he declared that all faithful and devout readers of the Bible enjoyed a certain kind of inspiration, all according to him being directly guided by the Spirit into the truth without any outward interference of Church doctrine, though the first fruits of revelation belonged to him alone.[1133]
By thus exalting the personal element into a principle, he dealt a mortal blow at the idea of a Church to whom was committed the true interpretation of doctrine.
Before pointing out, how, in spite of the boundless liberty proclaimed by Luther, he nevertheless was anxious to retain some sort of Church in the stead of the ancient one, we may here put on record certain statements of his on the illumination of the individual by God that have not as yet been quoted; albeit difficult to understand this is of the very essence of Lutheranism and quite indispensable to the new doctrine of an invisible Church.[1134]
According to the “Resolutions” he published after the Leipzig Disputation, every man is born into the faith through the Evangel owing to the bestowal of certainty from on high without the intervention of the Church’s authority or of any doctrine outwardly binding upon him. Satan and all the heretics, so he declares, could not have forged a more dangerous opinion than that in vogue among Catholics concerning the relations between the Church’s authority and the Bible Word; needless to say Luther makes out that, in their opinion, the Pope was put above the Written Word and even above God Himself.[1135] The genuine Catholic doctrine, viz. that the Church is the guardian of the true sense of Holy Scripture and at the same time a witness to the faithful of the authenticity and inspiration of the Holy Books, is indeed poles asunder from the teaching foisted on her. Moreover, it is in these very Resolutions to the Leipzig Disputation that Luther disparages the Epistle of James, arguing that its style falls far short of the apostolic dignity and could in no way compare with that of Paul. Here the “freedom” which he exalts into a principle already begins to undermine his new foundation, viz. the Bible itself.
Not long after this, in 1520, he lays claim in his “Von dem Bapstum” and “De captivitate Babylonica,” to having been instructed solely by the Holy Ghost and out of the Bible regarding the sense of Holy Scripture.
In the “De captivitate Babylonica” he teaches: the faithful who surrender themselves to the Spirit of God and allow Him to work upon them through the “Word” (he calls them the Church), received from the same Spirit an infallible sense and an inspiration by which to judge of doctrine, a sense which is indeed not susceptible of proof yet which creates absolute certainty. The same thing held good here as in the case of the truth, of which Augustine had said, that the soul was so laid hold of and carried away by it as to be enabled by its means to judge of all things, though unable to prove the truth itself which nevertheless it was forced to acknowledge with an infallible certainty.[1136] Luther also appeals as a comparison to the evidence of certain fundamental truths of mathematics or philosophy. This would at first sight make it appear as though he excluded arbitrary freedom in the interpretation of the Bible, since the mind must necessarily bow to such logical and unquestionable truths as he instances; this is, however, not the case, and we may recall what a wide field he opened up for delusion in this matter of inspiration.[1137]
When he teaches that the perception of the truth of religion penetrates into every Christian soul as the direct result of a certainty operated by God Himself we must, in order to understand him, keep in view the other points of his teaching, above all his opinion of man’s utter incapacity to do what is good, the depravity of man’s mental powers, his lack of free-will and absolute passivity under the hand of God. Above all he needed some such theory in order to justify his attack on the olden conception of the Church and to defend his own alleged certainty.
The universal priesthood also serves him as a prop for his idea of the Church. This priesthood, with the right to judge of doctrine, such as he pictures in his “To the German Nobility” and “On the Freedom of a Christian Man,” was a logical outcome of the above doctrine of inspiration and of his own inclination to break away from the olden Church. It gave to all complete independence in spiritual and ecclesiastical matters.[1138]
The above writings were followed in 1521 by his “Ad librum Ambrosii Catharini Responsio.” Here he treats in detail of the Church, and of Christ the spiritual and invisible rock on which alone she is built (without Peter and his successors); the Church’s nature is therefore spiritual and invisible; he emphasises anew the right of all the faithful individually to disregard all teaching authority and to give ear to the voice of the Holy Ghost Who speaks inwardly through the Evangel, and thus brings forth, nourishes, educates, strengthens and preserves the true Church. In this work Luther is, however, already at greater pains to bring down the Church to the region of the visible; he points out that at least she possesses visible elements, Baptism, the Supper and the Gospel. Nevertheless, direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost still looms large in the “Responsio” as we may gather from the elucubrations embellished with Bible texts in which he declares that the Papal Antichrist had been foretold in the Word of God and his appearance and workings even described in detail.[1139]
In “Von Menschen leren tzu meyden” (1522), which is still saturated with the spirit of the Wartburg he had just left, he insists that: “Each one must simply believe that it is God’s Word because he feels in his heart that it is the truth, even should an angel from heaven or all the world preach the contrary.”—His writing of 1523, “Das eyn Christliche Versamlung odder Gemeyne Recht und Macht habe alle Lere zu urteylen,” etc., was intended to promote unfettered freedom of spirit, but, of course, only in the interests of the removal of the Popish-minded clergy, for, naturally, there could be no question of such freedom being used against Luther, or of anyone setting himself up as judge of Luther’s new doctrine. Here, and even more strongly in the “De instituendis ministris Ecclesiæ,” which he published in the same year, he starts again from the standpoint of the universal priesthood; this was inconsistent with the clerical order of the Popish Church; by it every man was qualified to decide independently on doctrine in accordance with Scripture; but whoever preached openly in the Church of God only did so as representing the others and at their request; hence no preacher was to be at the head of any congregation unless the latter wanted him, and, taught by the unction of the Holy Spirit, found his doctrine right. A Christian might also, so he continues, whether amongst other Christians or amongst those who had formerly been unbelievers, instruct his fellow-men in the Gospel merely by virtue of his Christian calling; anyone, if he detected the ordinary teacher in error, might stand up and teach without any call, as the Apostle says (1 Cor. xiv. 30) “if anything be revealed to another, let the first hold his peace.”[1140]
But how is a man to be so certain in his heart as to be able to come forward in this way? “You can then be certain of the matter if you are able to decide freely and surely and to say this is the pure and simple truth, for it I will live or die, and whoever teaches otherwise, whatsoever be his title and standing, is accursed.”[1141]
It would be a waste of words to point out that this was to deal a death-blow at the olden conception of the Church.
Startling, nay, utterly stupefying, is the sharp contrast all this presents to Luther’s later attitude already described above (pp. 241, 251, 262). There we have a rigid, coercive Church held fast in the ban of the Wittenberg doctrine, whereas here, in the days of the early development of Lutheranism, we find an exuberant wealth of individual freedom which scoffs even at the possibility of any ecclesiastical order.
Only a dreamer and hot-head like Luther could have seen in such an individualism, where each one is teacher and priest, anything else than chaos.
Luther’s expectations in those early days were strange indeed and quite incapable of realisation; not only were all delusions to be excluded but everything, as he says of the enduring of opposition, was to be done “decently and piously”! If he is really speaking in earnest, then he shows himself a hermit utterly ignorant of human nature. And yet even in the seclusion of the convent walls, the greatest enthusiast should have seen that this was not the way to form a congregation on earth of believers, or anything resembling a Church.
We can, nevertheless, easily understand, to cite Möhler in confirmation of what has been said, “how the doctrine in question could, nay, had to, arise in Luther’s mind: Since the authority of the existing Church was against him he had perforce to seek for support in the authority of God working directly in him.… He saw no other way than to appeal to an intangible, inward authorisation.”[1142]—This he then proceeded to work out into a system for the other believers. “In the fashion of the true demagogue he flatters every Christian and invests him with such perfection as any unprejudiced mind must repudiate on the most cursory glance into his own heart.”[1143]
The truth is, the doctrine put forward by Luther against the Church, i.e. that Holy Scripture is the sole judge, has no meaning except on the assumption of a certainty through direct divine illumination.
Luther was quite right in declaring Holy Scripture to be the source of the doctrine of salvation; but it was a very different thing to assert that Holy Writ is the judge which determines what is the doctrine of salvation contained therein. He only reached the latter assertion by taking for granted the direct action of God in man for imparting a knowledge of the true sense of Scripture. Hence in his statements on Holy Scripture we frequently find one thing strangely confused with the other, the outward Book with the inward knowledge of the same, so that, as Möhler puts it, “the direct transmission of its contents to the reader is assumed in a quite childish fashion.”[1144] Even Köstlin has to admit this confusion, though he does so with reserve: “In Luther,” he says, “we see in many passages an intermingling of the pure Word and pure doctrine.”[1145]
Luther’s Later Attitude Towards the Idea of the Church. Objections
Henceforward there remained deeply rooted in Luther’s mind the conviction that the individual was taught by God and that this Divine enlightenment was always leading to the adoption of his own chief articles of faith and to the promotion of the Lutheran Church.[1146]
There is no call to follow up this idea through all his various writings. We may, however, call to mind a remarkable and warlike statement with which, towards the end of his life, he sought to justify his attacks on the Pope and the ancient Church, and that, too, at a time when he must long since have been disappointed at the results of the freedom of judging which he had once allowed but had now already in many ways curtailed.
In his “Wider das Bapstum vom Teuffel gestifft,” he quotes the words of Christ which refer to prayer in common: “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” This leads him to conclude, strange to say, “that even two or three gathered together in Christ’s name hold all the power of St. Peter and all the Apostles.” And, at once, he proceeds in his old vein to declare that two or three, nay, even a single one, who has been enlightened by Christ, is as good a teacher as the whole Church, and, indeed, in certain cases, even takes precedence of her. “Hence it comes,” he says, “that, often, a man who believes in Christ has withstood a whole crowd … as the prophets withstood the Kings of Israel, the priests and the whole nation [to say nothing of Luther himself who had withstood the whole Church]. In short, God will not be bound as to numbers, greatness, height, power, or anything personal to man, but will only be with those who love and keep His Word even though they be no more than stable boys. What does He care for high, great and mighty lords? He alone is the greatest, highest and mightiest.”[1147] Thus he practically claims a Divine dignity for an undertaking such as his, and paints his career afresh as that of a prophet who had a right to exalt himself even over the topmost hierarchy; only that he invests all the faithful, and even the “stable boy,” with the like high calling.
But, in such a system, what place was there left for anything more than a phantom Church? Obviously the Church had to withdraw into the region of the invisible. For her again to become visible and assume the shape to be considered below, seems almost a paradox.
In view of the elasticity and vagueness of Luther’s teaching on the Church it is not surprising that his followers, to this very day, are divided as to whether, in point of fact, Luther wanted a “Church” or not.
A well-known Lutheran theologian admits in plain language that Luther left the problem of the Church unsolved; only after the Reformer’s time did certain “important problems” arise in respect of Luther’s tentative definition of the Church.[1148] Another theologian, writing in a Protestant periodical, says that Luther left behind him no “Evangelical Church.” “The Reformation,” he says, “spelt Christendom’s deliverance from the Church.… His great anticlerical bias was never repudiated by Luther.… He committed the care of the pure Evangel to the hands of the civil authorities. It ought no longer to be disputed that Luther and the Reformers were not the founders of the Evangelical Church—and that their ideal Protestantism was one minus a Church. It is only necessary to take the idea of the Church in its strict sense—not as the congregation, or the people of God, nor yet as a body of men holding the same opinions, nor as the kingdom of Christ—but as an independent complexus of regulations ordering the religious life, as a special institution to provide for the particular needs of the religious commonwealth within traditional limits.” Hence “the fact that, in our homeland, three hundred years after Luther’s time, we find the Evangelical preacherdom firmly consolidated in a body not unlike the State, and professing to be the official representative of Protestantism is one of the most astounding paradoxes in all the history of the Church.”[1149]
There is no need to go so far, nor is it really necessary to put the words evangelical “Church” or “Churches” in inverted commas, as Protestants sometimes do in order to mark the quite unusual meaning of the word Church according to Luther’s view. It is obvious that logic had no place in Luther’s ideas and aims in respect of the Church, and his subjectivism imposed on him in this matter the utmost vagueness.
Frequently we find in Catholic works on dogma extracts from Luther’s writings dating from 1519 and 1520, which, it is alleged, show his positive conviction at that time that a Church—i.e. one in the olden Catholic sense—was to be recognised. But this is a mistake. The documents containing such utterances were of a diplomatic character, and we have no right to build upon them. They do not in any way invalidate what has been said above.
One of these is Luther’s “Unterricht auff etlich Artikell,” dating from the end of Feb., 1519, i.e. from a time when he had already discovered the Roman Antichrist;[1150] the other, his “Oblatio sive Protestatio,” dating from the summer of 1520, is a tract unmistakably intended to forestall the publication of the Roman Bull.[1151] In the first work, composed at the instance of Miltitz, it is true he says in praise of the Roman Church that, in her, “St. Peter and St. Paul, 46 Popes and many hundred thousand martyrs had shed their blood,” that she was honoured by God above all others, and that, for the sake of Christian charity and unity, it was not lawful to separate from her for all her present blemishes; he will not, however, express himself regarding the “authority and supremacy of the Roman Church,” “seeing that this does not concern the salvation of souls”; Christ, on the contrary, had founded His Church on charity, meekness and oneness, and, for the sake of this oneness, the Papal commands ought to be obeyed. By this he fancies that he has proved that he “does not wish to detract from the Roman Church.”[1152]
What he says in the other writing referred to above is even less acceptable, though here too he wishes to appear “as a submissive and obedient son of the Holy Christian Churches.”[1153] The circumstance that many shortsighted persons doubtless took him at his word at this critical time of his excommunication must have served powerfully to promote the apostasy.
As to the changes to which Luther’s mode of thought was liable, we may perhaps be permitted to make a general observation before passing from the consideration of the invisible Church to that of the Church visible.
The charge brought against him of having formerly taught differently on many points from what he did at a later date, Luther lightly swept aside with the assurance that he had gone on gradually advancing in the knowledge of the truth. His defenders seek to escape the difficulty in a like way. His changeableness and inconstancy must undoubtedly weigh heavily in the balance. We must not, however, be unfair to him or argue that the fact of his having at first defended elements of Catholic doctrine which he afterwards abandoned constituted a grave self-contradiction.
Luther openly admits that it was only gradually that he came to attack the Church so bitterly.
When King Henry VIII reproached him with the contradictions apparent between his earlier and later teaching on the Papacy and the Church, Luther boldly appealed in 1522 in his “Contra Henricum regem Angliæ” to his having only gradually learnt the whole truth: “I did not yet know that the Papacy was contrary to Scripture.… God had then given me a cheerful spirit that suffered itself to be despised [by his opponents].… By dint of so doing they forced me on, so that the further I went the more lies I discovered … until it became plain from Scripture, thanks to God’s Grace, that the Papacy, episcopacy, foundations, cloisters, universities, together with all the monkery, nunnery, Masses, services were nothing but damnable sects of the devil.… Hence it came about that I had to write other books in condemnation and retractation of my earlier ones.”[1154] He will also, so he adds ironically, retract what he had previously said in his “De captivitate Babylonica,” viz. that the Papacy was the prey of a strong Nimrod, as this had scandalised the lying King of England, who was himself the robber of his country. This, in his own style, he now proposes to amend as follows: “I should have said: The Papacy is the arch-devil’s most poisonous abomination hitherto seen on earth.”[1155]
If it was a difficult matter to give an account of Luther’s invisible Church, owing to the changes which took place in his own views, even more difficult is the task of tracing the further growth of his teaching. His invisible Church becomes more and more clearly a visible Church; yet all the while it protests, that, in its nature, it is invisible.