At a later date he opposed the Catholic doctrine of contrition on account of his aversion to the motive of fear of the judgments of God.
The Church had always taught that perfect contrition was that which proceeded from a real love of God, but that contrition from a holy fear of God was salutary because it involved a turning away from sin and a beginning of love. Luther, however, at the very commencement of his new teaching, was at pains to exclude fear as an inspiring motive. He was determined to weed it out of the religious life as unworthy of the service of God, quite unmindful of the fact that it was expressly recommended by reason, by the Fathers of the Church and by the very words of the Bible.
He says, for instance, in 1518 in his sermon on the Ten Commandments, that in contrition for sin no place is to be assigned to fear. The contrition which must be aroused is, he says, to proceed from love alone, because that which is based on fear is always outward, hypocritical and not lasting.[771]
In an earlier sermon he mentions the two kinds of contrition, namely, that which, according to him, is the only true one, “out of love of justice and of punishment,” or which, in other words, hates sin from the love of God, and that which springs from fear, which he says is artificial and not real, and to which he gives the nickname “gallows grief.” The latter, he says, does not make us abhor sin, but merely the punishment of sin, and were there no punishment for sin it would at once cease.[772] Hence he misapprehends the nature of imperfect contrition, for this in reality does not desire a return to sin.
He begins his tract on Penance in 1518 with the assertion, that contrition from the motive of fear makes a man a still greater sinner, because it does not detach the will from sin, and because the will would return to sin so soon as there was no punishment to be feared.[773] This contrition, he says, his opponents among the theologians defend; they could not understand that penance is sweet and that this sweetness leads to an abhorrence and hatred of sin.[774]
As he had banished contrition from a motive of fear, he should have laid all the more stress upon that which springs from love. But here he was met by a difficulty, namely, that concupiscence still exists in man and draws him towards sin, or rather, according to Luther’s ideas, of itself makes him a real sinner, so that no actual turning away from sin can take place in the heart. What then was to be done? “You must,” he says, “cast yourself by prayer into God’s hands so that He may account your contrition as real and true.” “Christ will supply from His own what is wanting in yours.”[775] Thus we again arrive at imputation, at a mere outward covering over of the defect of inward change.
If he looked upon penance and confession in this light, then, indeed, they were not of a nature to satisfy and tranquilise him.[776] We may, however, remark that in the time of his great crisis an earnest and devout fear of God the Judge would have availed him more than all his extravagant mysticism with its tendency to cast off the bonds of fear and abolish the keeping of the law.
We shall not be wrong if we assume that the frequent states of terror—of which the cause lay in his temperament rather than in his will—had their part in his aversion to fear and to the idea of God’s judgment. He felt himself impelled to escape at any cost from their dominion.
Other passages which Luther wrote at a later date on fear and contrition read rather differently and seem to advocate fear as a motive. We see thereby how hard he found it to cut himself adrift from the natural and correct view taught by theology. He declares, for instance, later, with great emphasis, that “true penance begins with the fear and the judgment of God.”[777]