Such is the perilous position he reaches under the influence of his distaste for works, viz. a violent antagonism to free will. Man is unable to do the least thing to satisfy this Holy God.[465] The Occamist theology of the school in which he was trained here serves him in good stead, as the following sentences, which are closely akin to Occam’s acceptation-theory, show: “We must always be filled with anxiety, ever fear and await the Divine acceptance”; for as all our works are in themselves evil, “only those are good which God imputes as good; they are in fact something or nothing, only in so far as God accepts them or not.” “The eternal God has chosen good works from the beginning that they should please Him,”[466] “but how can I ever know that my deed pleases God? How can I even know that my good intention is from God?”[467] Hence, away with the proud self-righteous (“superbi iustitiarii”) who are so sure of their good works!
Fear, desponding humility and self-annihilation, according to Luther, are the only feelings one can cherish in front of this terrible, unaccountable God.[468] “He who despairs of himself is the one whom God accepts.”[469]
He also speaks of a certain “pavor Dei,” which is the foundation of salvation: “trepidare et terreri” is the best sign, as it is said in Psalm cxliii.: “Shoot out Thy arrows and Thou shalt trouble them,” the “terrens Deus” leads to life.[470] True love does not ask any enjoyment from God, rather, he here repeats, whoever loves Him from the hope of being made eternally happy by Him, or from fear of being wretched without Him, has a sinful and selfish love (“amor concupiscentiæ”); but to allow the terrors of God to encompass us, to be ready to accept from Him the most bitter interior and exterior cross, to all eternity, that only is perfect love. And even with such love we are dragged into thick interior darkness.[471]
All these gloomy thoughts which cloud his mind, gather, when he comes to explain chapters viii. and ix. of the Epistle to the Romans, where the Apostle deals with the question of election to grace.
Luther thinks he has here found in St. Paul the doctrine of predestination, not only to heaven, but also to hell, expressed, moreover, in the strongest terms. At the same time he warns his hearers against faint-heartedness, being well aware how dangerous his views might prove to souls.
“Let no one immerse himself in these thoughts who is not purified in spirit, lest he sink into an abyss of horror and despair; the eyes of the heart must first be purified by contemplating the wounds of Christ. I discourse upon these matters solely because the trend of the lectures leads up to them, and because they are unavoidable. It is the strongest wine there is, and the most perfect food, a solid nourishment for the perfect; it is that most exalted theology of which the Apostle says (1 Cor. ii. 6): ‘we speak wisdom among the perfect’ ... only the perfect and the strong should study the first book of the Sentences [because predestination is dealt with at the end of Peter Lombard’s first book]; it should really be the last and not the first book; to-day many who are unprepared jump at it and then go away blinded in spirit.”[472]
Luther teaches that the Apostle’s doctrine is: God did not in their lifetime exercise His mercy towards the damned; He is right and not to be blamed when He follows herein His own supreme will alone. “Why then does man murmur as though God were not acting according to the law?” His will is, for every man, the highest good. Why should we not desire, and that with the greatest fervour, the fulfilment of this will, since it is a will which can in no way be evil? “You say: Yes, but for me it is evil. No, it is evil for none. The only evil is that men cannot understand God’s will and do it”; they should know that even in hell they are doing God’s will if it is His wish that they should be there.[473]
Hence the only way he knows out of the darkness he has himself created is recognition of, and resignation to, the possibility of a purely arbitrary damnation by God. The expressions he here makes use of for reprobation, “inter reprobos haberi,” “damnari,” “morte æterna puniri” make it plain that he demands resignation to actual reprobation and to being placed on a footing with the damned. Yet, as he always considers this resignation as the most perfect proof of acquiescence in the Will of God, it does not, according to him, include within itself a readiness to hate God, but, on the contrary, the strongest and highest love.[474] With such an exalted frame of mind, however, the actual penalty of hell would cease to exist. “It is impossible that he should remain apart from God who throws himself so entirely into the Will of God. He wills what God wills, therefore he pleases God. If he pleases God, then he is loved by God; if he is loved by God, then he is saved.”[475] That he is thus cutting the ground from under his hypothesis of an inevitable predestination to hell by teaching how we can escape it, does not seem to strike him. Or does he, perhaps, mean that only those who are not predestined to hell can thus overcome the fear of hell? Will such resignation be possible to him who really believes himself destined to hell, and who sees even in his resignation no means whereby he can escape it?
To such a one even the “wounds of Christ” offer no assurance and no place of refuge. They only speak to man of the God of revelation, not of the mysterious, unsearchable God. The untenable and insulting comparison between the mysterious and the revealed Supreme Being which Luther was later on to institute is here already foreshadowed.
He explains in detail how the will of man does not in the least belong to the person who wills, or the road to the runner. “All is God’s, who gives and creates the will.” We are all instruments of God, who works all in all. Our will is like the saw and the stick—examples which he repeatedly employs later in his harshest utterances concerning the slavery of the will. Sawing is the act of the hand which saws, but the saw is passive; the animal is beaten, not by the stick, but by him who holds the stick. So the will also is nothing, but God who wields it is everything.[476]