Luther, vol. 1 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

Such was not the case. For all acts necessary for salvation true Scholasticism demanded the supernatural “preventing” grace of God.[335] Yet as early as 1516 Luther had elegantly described all the scholastic theologians as “Sow theologians,” on account of their pretended “Deliria” against grace.[336] His first fault, that of unwarranted generalisation, comes out clearly.

The second, more momentous, fault which Luther committed was to fly to the extreme even in doctrine, abolishing all that displeased him and setting up as his main thesis, that man can do nothing, absolutely nothing, good. Not only did he say: “I learnt nothing in scholastic theology worth remembering; I only learnt what must be unlearnt, what is absolutely opposed to Holy Scripture” (“omnino contraria divinis litteris”).[337] He also asserted at a very early period that Holy Scripture teaches that God’s grace does everything in man of itself alone without his vital participation, without liberty, without resolve, without merit. Such a statement does not indeed appear in the Commentary on the Psalms, but it will be found in his academic lectures on the Pauline Epistles, more especially in the Commentary on Romans. For a moment he thought he had discovered in St. Augustine the necessary weapons against the formalism of his school of theology, but now St. Paul appeared to him to give the loudest testimony against it; the Apostle is so determined in his denunciation of the pride of human reason and human will, and in presenting the Gospel of the Son of God, faith and grace, as the only salvation of mankind. Luther imagined he had found in Paul the doctrines which appealed to him: that all human works were equally useless, whether for eternal salvation or for natural goodness; that man’s powers are good for nothing but sin; if grace, which the Apostle extols, is to come to its rights, then we must say of original sin that it has utterly ruined man’s powers of thinking and willing so far as what is good in God’s sight is concerned; original sin still lives, even in the baptised, as a real sin, being an invincible attraction to selfishness and all evil, more particularly to that of the flesh; by it the will is so enslaved that only in those who are justified by grace can there be any question of freedom for good.

As regards Occam’s teaching concerning man, his Fall and his powers, so far as this affects the question of a correct understanding of Luther’s development: in the matter of original sin it agreed with that of Aquinas and Scotus, according to which its essence was a carentia iustitiæ debitæ, i.e. originalis; likewise it asserted the existence of concupiscence in man, the fomes or tinder of sin, as Occam is fond of calling it, as the consequence of original sin; on the other hand it minimised too much the evil effects of original sin on the reason and on the will, by assuming that these powers still remain in man almost unimpaired. This was due to the nominalistic identification of the soul with its faculties; as the soul remained the same as before, so, they said, the powers as a whole also remained the same.[338] The “disabling” of these powers of which St. Thomas and the other Scholastics speak, i.e. the weakening which the Council of Trent also teaches (“liberum arbitrium viribus attenuatum et inclinatum”),[339] was not sufficiently emphasised.

Gabriel Biel, whose views are of some weight on account of his connection with Luther, finds the rectitude of the natural will (rectitudo) in its liberty, and this, he says, has remained intact because it is, as a matter of fact, the will itself, from which it does not differ.[340] In other passages, it is true, he speaks of “wounds”; for owing to concupiscence the will is “inconstant and changeable”; but he nevertheless reverts to “rectitudo,” erroneously relegating the results of original sin to the lower powers alone. Following Occam, and against St. Thomas and Scotus, he makes of concupiscence a “qualitas,” viz. a “qualitas corporalis.”[341] Again, following his master and d’Ailly, Biel asserts—and this is real Occamism—that the will is able without grace to follow the dictates of right reason (“dictamen rectæ rationis”) in everything, and is therefore able of itself to keep the whole law of nature, even to love God purely and above all things.[342] An example of how inaccurate Biel is in the details of his theological discussions has been pointed out by Denifle, who shows that in quoting three various opinions of the greater Scholastics on a question of the doctrine of original sin (“utrum peccatum originale sit aliquid positivum in anima vel in carne”) “not one of the opinions is correctly given,” and yet this “superficial and wordy author was one of Luther’s principal sources of information regarding the best period of Scholasticism.”[343]

The Nominalists doubtless recognised the supernatural order as distinct from the natural, and Occam as well as Biel, d’Ailly and Gerson do not here differ materially from the rest of the Scholastics; but the limits of natural ability, more particularly in respect of keeping the commandments and loving God above all, are carried too far. Luther’s masters had here insisted with great emphasis on the argument of Scotus which they frequently and erroneously made to prove even more than was intended, viz. that as reason is capable of realising that man is able to fulfil the law and to render such love, and as the will is in a position to carry out all that reason puts before it, therefore man is able to fulfil both requirements.[344] In this argument insufficient attention has been paid to the difficulties which interior and exterior circumstances place in the way of fallen man. Theologians generally were very much divided in opinion concerning the possibility of fulfilling these requirements, and the better class of Scholastics denied it, declaring that the assistance of actual grace was requisite, which, however, they held, was given to all men of good will. Against the doctrine which Biel made his own, that man is able, without grace, to avoid all mortal sin,[345] keep all the commandments and love God above all things, not only Thomists, but even some of the Nominalists protested.[346]

Here again, according to Denifle, a serious error, committed by Biel regarding St. Thomas, must be pointed out, one, too, which may have had its effect upon Luther. Biel erroneously makes the holy Doctor say the opposite of what he really teaches when he ascribes to him the proposition: “Homo potest cavere peccata mortalia [omnia] sine gratia.” As Denifle reminds us again, it was “from this author that Luther drew in great part his knowledge of the earlier Scholastics.”[347] Biel, however, in his sermons and instructions to preachers restricts the thesis of the possibility of loving God above all things through our natural powers. This, man is able to do, he says, “according to some writers, more especially in the state of paradisiacal innocence, but the act is not so perfect and not so easy as with God’s grace and is without supernatural merit. God has so ordained that He will not accept any act as meritorious for heaven excepting only that which is elicited by grace” (“ex gratia elicitum”).[348]

The views of the Occamists or “Moderns” exhibited yet other weak points. Man, so they taught, is able to merit grace “de congruo.” They admitted, it is true, that grace was a supernatural gift, “donata” and “gratuita,” as they termed it, but they saw in man’s natural love of God, and in his efforts, an adequate disposition for arriving at the state of saving grace.[349] The great Schoolmen on the contrary taught with St. Thomas, that the preparation and disposition for saving grace, i.e. all those good works which precede justification, do not originate in us but are due to the grace of Christ.

As for the teaching regarding natural and supernatural love of God, the keeping of the commandments and the predisposition for grace, Luther, in 1516, appears to have scarcely been acquainted with the opinion of any of the better representatives of Scholasticism, to whom he had access. It was only in 1518 that his attention was directed to Gregory of Rimini (General of the Augustinian Hermits in 1357), an eclectic whose views were somewhat unusual, and in this case, Luther, instead of making use of the good which was to be found in him in abundance, preferred to disregard his real opinion and to set him up as opposed to the teaching of the Schoolmen.[350] In 1519, labouring under a total misapprehension of the truth as regards both Gregory and the Schoolmen, he wrote: “the ‘Moderns’ agree with the Scotists and Thomists concerning free will and grace, with the one exception of Gregory of Rimini, whom they all condemn, but who rightly and effectively proves them to be worse than the Pelagians. He alone among all the Scholastics agrees with Augustine and the Apostle Paul, against Carlstadt and all the new Schoolmen.”[351] As though all Scholastics, old and new, had taught what Luther here attributes to them, viz. that “it is possible to gain heaven without grace,” because, according to them, “a good though not meritorious work can be done” without grace. On the contrary, not the Thomists only, but also many other theologians were opposed to the thesis that the will could, of itself, always and everywhere, conform itself to the dictates of right reason and thus arrive at grace, but Gregory of Rimini, whom Luther favours so much as a Doctor of his own Order, declares that the keeping of the whole law was only possible through grace, and that therefore God had, with His law, imposed nothing impossible on man.[352] According to Luther, however, God had demanded of human nature what was impossible.

Occam and his school deviate somewhat from the rest of the Scholastics in the application of the well-known axiom: “Facienti quod est in se Deus non denegat gratiam.”[353]