We have so far been considering the precipitate and excessive antagonism shown at an early date by Luther towards the school of Occam, especially towards its anthropological doctrines; we have also noted its influence on his new heretical principles, particularly on his denial of man’s natural ability for good. Now we must turn our attention to the positive influence of the Occamist teaching upon his new line of thought, for Luther’s errors are to be ascribed not only to the negative, but also to the positive effects of his school.
His principal dogma, that of justification, must first be taken into consideration.
This he drew up entirely on the lines of a scheme handed down to him by his school. It is no uncommon thing to see even the most independent and active minds tearing themselves away from a traditional train of thought in one particular, and yet continuing in another to pursue the accustomed course, so great is the power which a custom acquired at school possesses over the intellect. The similarity existing between Luther’s and Occam’s doctrine of the imputation of righteousness is quite remarkable. Occam had held it, at least as possible, that a righteousness existed which was merely imputed; at any rate, it was only because God so willed it that sanctifying grace was necessary in the present order of things. He and his school had, as a matter of fact, no clear perception of the supernatural habit as a supernatural principle of life in the soul. According to the Occamist Peter d’Ailly, whom Luther repeatedly quotes in his notes on Peter Lombard, reason cannot be convinced of the necessity of the supernatural habit; all that this is supposed to do can be done equally well by a naturally acquired habit; an unworthy man might be found worthy of eternal life without any actual change taking place in him; only owing to an acceptation on God’s part (“a sola divina acceptatione”) does the soul become worthy of eternal life, not on account of any created cause (therefore not on account of love and grace).[380] “The whole work of salvation here becomes external; it is mechanical, not organic.”[381]
If Luther, in consequence of his study of these Occamist doctrines, fell into error regarding the supernatural, the consequences were even worse when, with his head full of such Occamistic ideas, he proceeded to expound the most difficult of the Pauline Epistles, with their dim and mysterious handling of grace, and, at the same time, to ponder on the writings of St. Augustine,[382] that deep-thinking Doctor of grace. Such studies could only breed fresh confusion in his mind.
The result was as follows: regarding imputation, i.e. one of the foundations of his theology, Luther quotes Occam in such a way as to represent him as teaching as a fact what he merely held to be possible. He declares sanctifying grace to be not merely superfluous, but also non-existent, and erects the theory of Divine acceptation into a dogma. This alone would be sufficient to demonstrate his positive dependence on Occamism.
The theories of acceptation, which were peculiar to the Occamists and which Luther took over—though what they called by this name he prefers to call imputation—had not only met with approval, but had also been widely applied by this school.
According to d’Ailly, evil is not evil on account of its special nature, but only because God forbids it (“præcise, quia lege prohibitum”); a law or rule of conduct does not exist by nature, for God might have willed otherwise (“potest non esse lex”); He has, however, decreed it in the present order of things. Similar views appear in Luther’s Commentary on Romans, where little regard is paid to the objective foundation of the moral law.[383]
According to Occam, God acts according to whim. D’Ailly actually discovers in him the view that it is not impossible to suppose that the created will might deserve well by hating God, because God might conceivably command this. In Luther we at least find the opinion that God knows of no grounds for His action and might therefore work what is evil in man, which then, of course, would not be evil in God in consequence of His not imputing it to Himself as such.
The Divine imputation or pactum plays its part in the Occamistic sense in Luther’s earliest theological lectures on the Psalms. “Faith and Grace,” he there says, “by which we are justified to-day, would not justify us of themselves save as a consequence of the ‘pactum Dei.’” In the same place he teaches that, as a result of such an “agreement and promise,” those who, before Christ, fulfilled the law according to the letter, acquired a supernatural merit de congruo.[384]