One of the books used by Luther in his youth and preserved in the Ratsschul-Library at Zwickau is a copy of Tauler’s sermons in the 1508 Augsburg edition with Luther’s annotations made about 1515.[417] The notes prove how strongly his active imagination was caught up into this new world of ideas, and how, with swelling sails, he set out for the port he thought lay beyond the mystic horizon.
Mysticism teaches the true wisdom, he there says, warmly praising this knowledge as “experimental, not doctrinal” (“sapientia experimentalis et non doctrinalis”). Dimly the error breaks in upon his mind, that man can have no wish, no will of his own with respect to God; true religion (vera fides) is the complete renunciation of the will, the most absolute passivity; only thus is the empty vessel of the heart filled by God, the cause of all; the work of salvation is a “negotium absconditum,” entirely the work of God, and He commences it by the destruction of our self (“quod nos et nostra destruat”); He empties us not only of our good works and desires, but even of our knowledge, for “He can only work in us while we are ignorant and do not comprehend what He is doing.” Any active striving after virtue on our part (“operatio virtutum”) only hinders the birth of the word in our soul.[418]
His new ideal of virtue necessarily involves our not striving after any particular virtues; we are not to imitate this or that special virtue of some saint lest this prove to be the result of our own planning, and not God’s direction, and thus be contrary to passivity.[419] Not only will he grant nothing to sexual desire, or allow it anywhere, but even the enjoyment of the five senses (he calls it simply luxuria) must be struggled against, and the “sweets of the spirit” be kept at a distance, namely, “devotiones,” “affectiones,” “consolationes et hominum bonorum societates.”[420]
In his recommendation of passivity two tendencies unite, the negative influence of the school of Occam, viz. the opposition to human works, and the influence of certain dimly apprehended mystical thoughts.
While Luther twists Tauler’s expressions to suit the errors which were germinating in his mind in opposition to Scholasticism, or, rather, to Occamism, he proceeds, according to his manuscript notes in Tauler’s book, seriously to jeopardise free will without, however, as yet actually attacking it. He finds the origin of all evil in man’s setting up against God his own will, and cherishing his own individual intentions and hopes. He thinks he is summing up the whole of Tauler’s doctrine with the words “God does everything in us” (“omnia in nobis operatur Deus”).[421] Where Tauler in one of his sermons, obviously speaking of other matters, says: “When God is in all things,” Luther immediately follows up the author’s words with: “Hoc, quæso, nota”;[422] the exclusiveness of the Divine being and working appears to him of the utmost moment.
And yet it should be expressly pointed out that Tauler and the real Christian mystics knew nothing of that passivity and complete surrendering of self which floated before Luther’s mind. On the contrary, they declare such ideas to be false. “The ideal of Christian mysticism is not an ideal of apathy but of energy,”[423] “a striving after an annihilation of individuality” was always a mark of mock mysticism. Another essential difference between true mysticism and that of Luther is to be found in the quality of the state of spiritual sadness and abandonment. Luther’s descriptions of the state mirror the condition of a soul without hope or trust and merely filled with despair and dull resignation; this we shall see more clearly in his accounts of the pains of hell and of readiness for hell. With the recognised Catholic mystics this is not the case, and, in spite of all loss of consolation, there yet remains, according to them, “in the very depths of the soul, the heroic resolve of fidelity in silent prayer.”[424] Confidence and love are never quenched though they are not sensibly felt, and the feeling of the separation of the soul from its God in this Gethsemane proceeds merely from a great love of God which does not think of any “readiness for hell.” “That is love,” Tauler says, where there is a burning in the midst of starvation, want and deprivations, and yet at the same time perfect calm.[425]
It is no wonder that in Luther’s Commentary on Romans, written at about the same time as the notes, or shortly after, his pseudo-mysticism breaks out. In addition to the already quoted passages from the Commentary let us take the following, which is characteristic of his new conception of perfect love: With the cross we must put everything of self to death; should God give spiritual graces, we must not enjoy them, not rejoice over them; for they may bring us in place of death a mistaken life of self, so that we stop short at the creature and leave the Creator. Therefore away with all trust in works! Only the most perfect love, the embracing of God’s will absolutely, without any personal advantage is of any worth, only such love as would, if it could, strip itself even of its own being.[426]
Frequently in this period of strange spiritual transition Luther’s manner of speaking of the dissolving of the soul in God, and the penetrating of all things by the Divine, borders on Pantheism, or on false Neo-Platonism. This, however, is merely owing to his faulty mode of expression. He does not appear to have been either disposed or tempted to leave the path of Christianity for actual Pantheism or Neo-Platonism, although the previous example of Master Eckhart and of others shows us, that mysticism has not infrequently allured even great and talented minds on to these rocks. That he should, as already shown, have welcomed without any sign of scruple the actual destruction of all free will for good must, in part, be explained by his lack of a thorough theological and philosophical training. How different might have been his development, given his mental character, had he, instead of devoting his attention in his unripe years to the teachings of mysticism, steeped himself, for instance, in the “Summa Theologica” of Thomas of Aquin, that brightest and greatest mind of the Middle Ages! After making himself thoroughly at home in such a theology he would then have been qualified to summon to his assistance the better sort of mysticism, in which he would have found much agreeing with his stamp of mind and which would have allowed him to rise to a still higher enjoyment of the true and good. If then he was not content to stop short at Tauler and the “German Theology,” there was the Dominican Henry Suso also at his service, the godly author of writings such as “The Little Book of Eternal Wisdom,” which has been called the “finest fruit of German mysticism” (Denifle). He shows in how inspiring a union pious immersion in God can be combined with theological clearness of thought. Many others who flourished after the time of Suso, in Germany and elsewhere, and who distinguished themselves as practical and at the same time theoretical mystics by the depth of their feeling and their theological culture would have served as his examples. Such were Johann Ruysbroek, of Groenendael near Brussels, Gerard Groot of Deventer, the founder of the Brothers of the Common Life, Henry of Louvain, Ludolf the Carthusian, Gerson of Paris—with his excellent Introduction to Mysticism, on the lines of the so-called Areopagite—Thomas à Kempis, the pious guide, and, among enlightened women, Lidwina of Schiedam in Holland, Catherine of Bologna and Catherine of Genoa. The names mentioned, so far as they belong to the domain of German mysticism, point to a fertile religious and literary field in Luther’s own country, as attractive by profundity of thought and beauty of representation as by depth of feeling and heartiness of expression. It was a cruel misunderstanding—which, however, is now breaking down more and more, even in the case of Protestant writers—to represent the ideas of German mysticism as precursors of Luther’s later doctrine.
This vein of true mysticism remained sealed to Luther. By attempting to create a theology of his own with the fantastic notions which he read into Tauler, he fell into the mistake against which Thomas of Aquin had already sounded a warning note in his “Summa Theologica.” Without a safe guiding star many minds are led astray by the attraction of the extraordinary, by the delusions of an excited fancy or the influence of disordered inclinations, and consider that to be the work of Divine grace which is merely deception, as experience shows.[427]
As an expression of the spiritual turmoil going on in Luther, we may quote a passage from a sermon of January, 1517. Speaking of the gifts of the three kings he says: “the pure and choice myrrh is the abnegation with which we must be ready to return to absolute nothingness, to the state before creation; every longing for God is there relinquished (!), and likewise the desire for things outside of God; one thing only is desired: to be led according to His good pleasure back to the starting-point, i.e. to nothingness. Ah, yes, just as before God called us into existence we were nothing, desired nothing, and existed only in the mind of God, so we must return to that point, to know nothing, to desire nothing, to be nothing. That is a short way, the way of the cross, by which we may most speedily arrive at life.”[428] Whether a sermon was the right place for such, at best purely incomprehensible, an outburst, is doubtful. Luther, the idealist, was then disposed to pay but little attention to such practical considerations. In the eyes of many of his pupils and friends, however, mystical discourses of this sort may have lent him the appearance of a pious, spiritually minded man.