Nevertheless Luther himself was affrighted at the theory of faith alone, and imputation. He feared lest he should be reproached with setting good works aside with his doctrine of imputed merit. He therefore explains in self-defence that he did not desire a bare faith; “the hypocrites and the lawyers” thought they would be saved by such a faith, but according to Paul’s words a faith was requisite by which we “approach Christ” (“per quem habemus accessum per fidem,” Rom. v. 2). Those are therefore in error who go forward in Christ with over-great certainty, but not by faith; as though they would be saved by Christ, for not doing anything themselves and giving no sign of faith. These possess too much faith, or, better still, none at all. Both must exist: “by faith” and “by Christ”; we must do and suffer gladly all that we can in the faith of Christ, and yet account ourselves in all things unprofitable servants, and only through Christ alone think ourselves able to go to God. For the object of works of faith is to make us worthy of Christ and of the refuge and protection of His righteousness.”[215] With this is connected Luther’s insistence on the necessity of invoking God’s grace in order that we may be able to fight against our passions and to bring forth good works, and in order that the passions, which in themselves are sin, may not be imputed by God.[216] Thus can “the body of sin be destroyed” and the “old man overcome.”[217] Luther admits, though with hesitation and in contradiction with himself, works which prepare us for justification.[218]
In spite of everything, in this first stage of his development, justification appears to him uncertain. He declares in so many words: “We cannot know whether we are justified and whether we believe”; and he can only add rather lamely: “we must look upon our works as works of the Law and be, in humility, sinners, hoping only to be justified through the mercy of Christ.”[219] He has no “joyful assurance of salvation”—which, in fact, had no place whatever in the new teaching as expounded by Luther himself—and its name is always drowned by the loud cry of sin. Even saints, on account of the sin which still clings to them, do not know whether they are pleasing to God. If they are well advised, they beg solely for the forgiveness of their sin which lies like lead on their conscience. “That is,” the mystic explains, “the wisdom which is hidden in secret” (“abscondita in mysterio”), because our righteousness “being entirely dependent on God’s decree remains unknown to us.”[220]
Luther cannot assure us sufficiently often that man is nothing but sin, and sins in everything. His reason is that concupiscence remains in man after baptism. This concupiscence he looks upon as real sin, in fact it is the original sin, enduring original sin, so that original sin is not removed by baptism, remains obdurate to all subsequent justifying grace,[221] and, until death, can, at the utmost, only be diminished. He says expressly, quite against the Church’s teaching, that original sin is only covered over in baptism, and he tries to support this by a misunderstood text from Augustine and by misrepresenting Scholasticism.[222]
Augustine teaches with clearness and precision in many passages that original sin is blotted out by baptism and entirely remitted;[223] Luther, however, quotes him to the opposite effect. The passage in question occurs in De nuptiis et concupiscentia (l., c. xxv., n. 28) where Luther makes this Father say: sin (peccatum) is forgiven in baptism, not so that it no longer remains, but that it is no longer imputed.[224] Whereas what Augustine actually says is: the concupiscence of the flesh is forgiven, etc. (“dimitti concupiscentiam carnis non ut non sit, sed ut in peccatum non imputetur”). And yet Luther was acquainted with the true reading of the passage—which is really opposed to his view—as he had annotated it in the margin of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, where it is correctly given.[225] Luther, after having thus twisted the passage as above, employs it frequently later.[226] In the original lecture on the Epistle to the Romans he has, it is true, added to the text, after the word “peccatum,” the word “concupiscentia,” as the new editor points out, in excuse of Luther.[227] But on the preceding page Luther adds in exactly the same way in two passages of his own text where he speaks of “peccatum,” the word “concupiscentia,” so that his addition to Augustine cannot be regarded as a mere correction of a false citation, all the less since the incorrect form is found unaltered elsewhere in his writings.[228]
As regards Scholasticism, Luther holds that its teaching on original sin was very faulty, because it “dreamt” that original sin, like actual sin, was entirely removed (by baptism).[229] This is one of his first attacks on a particular doctrine of Scholasticism, his earlier opposition having been to Scholasticism in general. The blame he here administers presupposes the truth of his view that concupiscence and original sin come under the same category, and that the former is culpable. Almost all the Scholastics had made the essence of original sin to consist in the loss of original justice, whilst allowing that its “materiale,” as they called it, lay in concupiscence, so that without any “dream” it was quite easy to conceive of original sin as blotted out, while the “materiale” or “fomes peccati” or concupiscence remained.[230] Other examples of how Luther, partly owing to his ignorance of true Scholasticism, came to bring the most glaring charges against that school, will be given later.
Actual sins remain, according to Luther, even after forgiveness, for they too are only covered over. Formerly, it is true, he admits having believed that repentance and the sacrament of penance removed everything (“omnia ablata putabam et evacuata, etiam intrinsece”), and therefore in his madness he had thought himself better after confession than those who had not confessed.[231] “Thus I struggled with myself, not knowing that whilst forgiveness is certainly true, yet there is no removal of sin.”
Not only does real sin continue to dwell in man through concupiscence, but, according to a further statement of Luther, the keeping of God’s law is impossible to man. “As we cannot keep God’s commandments we are really always in unrighteousness, and therefore there remains nothing for us but to fear and to beg for remission of the unrighteousness, or rather that it may not be imputed, for it is never altogether remitted, but remains and requires the act of non-imputation.[232]
But how, then, he must have asked himself in following out the train of thought of his new system, if, owing to the depravity of human nature as the result of original sin there remains in man no freedom in the choice of good? “Where does the freedom of the will come in?” he asks, as it follows from the Apostle’s teaching that “the keeping of the law is simply impossible” (“sæpius dixi, simpliciter esse impossibile legem implere?”).[233] He hesitates, it is true, to deny free will, but only for a moment, and then tells us boldly that the will has been robbed of its freedom (of choosing) good. “Had I said this, people would curse me,” but, according to him, it is St. Paul who advocates the doctrine that without grace there is no freedom of the will in the choice of good which can please God.[234] Here we have a foretaste of the doctrine Luther was to express at the Leipzig disputation and elsewhere, viz. that the freedom of the will for good is merely a name (“res de solo titulo”),[235] and of that later terrible thesis of his that free will in general is dead (“liberum arbitrium est mortuum”),[236] a thesis he defended more particularly against Erasmus.
The young Monk was thus prepared to admit all the consequences of his new ideas, whereas the Apostle Paul, more particularly in his Epistle to the Romans, recognises the ability of man for natural goodness, and speaks of the law of nature in the heathen world and the possibility and actuality of its observance. “They do by nature the things of the law” (Rom. ii. 14). Luther will only allow that they do such things by means of grace, and the word grace again he uses merely for the grace of justification. His opinion with regard to the virtues of the heathen sages is noteworthy. He says that the philosophers of olden time had to be damned, although they may have been virtuous from their very inmost soul (“ex animo et medullis”), because they had at least experienced some self-satisfaction in their virtue, and, in consequence of the sinfulness of nature, must necessarily have succumbed to sinful love of self.[237] Not long after, i.e. as early as 1517, he declares in his MS. Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews their virtues to be merely vices (“revera sunt vitia”).[238]