Luther, vol. 1 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

THE ROCKS OF FALSE MYSTICISM

1. Tauler and Luther

John Tauler, the mystic and Dominican preacher of Strasburg, whom Luther so favoured, was quite Catholic in his teaching; to attribute to him, as has been done, any Pantheistic ideas is to do him an injustice, and it is equally wrong to imagine that he forestalled Luther’s notions regarding grace and justification. Yet his fanciful and suggestive mode of expression, his language which voiced, not the conceptual definiteness of Scholasticism, but the deep feelings of the speaker, often allows of his words being interpreted in a way quite foreign to his real meaning. It was just this depth of feeling and this obscurity which attracted Luther. As his letters show, he breathed more freely while perusing Tauler’s writings, because they responded to his natural disposition and his moods, not the least point in their favour being the absence in them of those hard-and-dry philosophical and dialectical mannerisms which were hateful to him. Without even rightly understanding it, he at once applied the teaching of this master of mysticism to his own inward condition and his new, growing opinions; he clothed his own feelings and views in Tauler’s beautiful and inspiring words. His beloved mother-tongue, so expertly handled in Tauler’s sermons, was at the same time a new means of binding him still more firmly to the mystic. In Tauler the necessity of the complete surrender of the soul to the action of God, of indifference and self-abandonment, is strongly emphasised. To free oneself as far as possible of self; to renounce all confidence in oneself in so far as this implies self-love and the pride of the sinful creature; to accept with waiting, longing, suffering confidence God’s almighty working, this, with Tauler as with all true mystics, is the fundamental condition for a union through love with the most Perfect Being. Luther, in his false interpretation of Tauler, came to dream of a certain false passivity on man’s part, which he then expanded into that complete passivity which accompanies the process of justification. He thought that Tauler repudiated the doing of good works in his own sense. He fancied that in him he had an ally in his fight against the so-called self-righteous and holy-by-works. He quite overlooked the contrary exhortations to the practice of good works and all observances of the Church which the great mystic had so much at heart.[408]

Tauler frequently speaks of the night of the soul, of the darkness in which the natural man must place himself on the way from death to life and through the cross to light; by this he means the self-humiliation which is pleasing to God, by which man fills himself with the sense of his own nothingness, and so prepares for the incoming of God into his innermost being. He often insists that the Creator, by means of the suffering and cruel inward desolation which He sends His elect, brings about that state of night, cross and death, to prove and refine the soul in order to prepare it for an intimate union with Himself. Such passages Luther referred to the states of fear and fright from which he so frequently suffered, possibly also to his want of joy in his vocation, and the state of unrest which, as he complains to his brother monk, George Leiffer, owing to his surrendering himself too much to his own excessive cleverness, pressed heavily upon him.[409] When, during the warfare he had to wage on behalf of his new doctrine, his inward unrest increased, and at times almost mastered him, he took refuge still more eagerly in the tenets of the mystic, striving to calm himself with the idea that his pangs of conscience and his mental anguish were merely a preparation for the strong, joyous faith which must spring up in his soul and those of his followers as a pledge of justification. His very doubts and difficulties became to him, with the help of his misunderstood mysticism, a sign that he was chosen for the highest things, and that God would lead him and all to peace through the new doctrine. It is in connection with his teaching concerning the night of the soul that he most frequently quotes Tauler at the commencement of his public struggle, whereas, before that, he had been wont to bring him into the field only against the so-called self-righteous, or against Scholasticism.[410]

It was known at that time that he had become a pupil of Tauler, whom he frequently quoted, but few of his adversaries seem to have recognised the above-mentioned psychological connection. Dungersheim of Leipzig on one occasion, in 1519, rightly holds up before him the teaching and example of Tauler, and tells him he might have learnt from him how useful it was to accept from others warnings and criticisms; he gloried in having learnt from Tauler many more spiritual doctrines than from any other man, but he really only understood one thing well, namely, how to kick against the pricks to his own hurt.[411]

Luther’s first mention of Tauler is not contained in his letter to Lang of the late summer of 1516,[412] as was hitherto thought, but in the Commentary on Romans, which was already finished in the summer of 1516.

It follows from this circumstance that he was already acquainted with Tauler’s sermons during the time that he was busy on this Epistle. He had come across them somewhat earlier, probably in the course of 1515, when he was nearing his inward crisis. In this passage of the Commentary[413] he declares that God works secretly in man and without his knowledge, and that what He does must be borne, i.e. must be accepted with humility and neglect of self. How we are thus to suffer what God sends, “Tauler,” he says, “explains in the German language better than the others. Yes, yes, we do not know how to pray in the way we should. Therefore God’s strength must come to the assistance of our misery. We, however, must acknowledge our despair and utter nakedness.”

But without actually mentioning Tauler by name, he frequently in this Commentary, utilises ideas which he supports by his teaching. Thus, when in Romans v. 3 he describes in far-fetched terms the self-annihilation of the soul, its fears and pains, from which finally its firm hope in God emerges. The “tribulatio patientiam operator” of the Apostle he takes there to mean mystical inward tribulation; one must desire to be as nothing, in order that the honour of the Eternal God as Creator may remain.[414] Only the self-righteous and the hypocrites shun the mystical death which lies in a renunciation of all self-merit; according to a mystical interpretation of a certain Bible passage the “strong man armed” (Luke xi. 21 f.) will destroy the “mountains of their works”; but the good, in their absolute destitution and tribulation, rejoice in God only, because, according to Paul, “the charity of God is poured forth” in the hearts of the sorely proved; they are drawn into the mysterious darkness of the Divine union and recognise therein not what they love, but only what they do not love; they find nothing but satiety in what they know and experience, only what they know not, that they desire.[415] Such language simply misinterprets some of Tauler’s profound meditations.

As, in his Commentary on the Psalms, Luther does not yet refer either directly or indirectly to Tauler, although the matter frequently invited him to do so, this confirms the supposition that it was only after the termination of those lectures, or towards their conclusion in 1515, that he became acquainted with the Master’s sermons—which alone come under consideration. Probably, as mentioned elsewhere, he owed his knowledge of them to Johann Lang.[416]