Such words form a quite obvious preliminary to the “Evangelical freedom” which he was afterwards to vindicate. He thus gives a much wider application to the ideas he had met with in Tauler than was in the mind of that pious mystic. Tauler writes: “I tell you that you must not submit your inner man to anyone, but to God only. But your exterior man you must submit in a true and real humility to God and to all creatures.”[598] Luther says what on the surface seems quite similar: the Christian is free and master of all things and is subject to no one (by faith), and yet at the same time a willing servant of all and subject to all (by charity).[599] Yet, both in the Commentary on Romans and in the works which were soon to follow, “the willing servant” is more and more ousted by false ideas of independence, so that a danger arises of only the “free master of all things” remaining. In the Commentary on Romans all exterior submission to the Church is, in principle, menaced by a liberty which, appealing to the inward experience of the Word and a deeper conception of religion, seeks to overstep all barriers.
The confused ideas for which he was beholden to his pseudo-mysticism were in great part the cause of this and of other errors.
9. The Mystic in the Commentary on Romans
Since the appearance in print of Luther’s Commentary on Romans it has been possible to perceive more clearly the ominous power which false mysticism had gained over the young author.
His misapprehension of some of the principal elements of Tauler’s sermons and of the “Theologia Deutsch” stands out in sharp relief in these lectures on the Pauline Epistle, and we see more plainly how the obscure ideas he finds in the mystics at once amalgamate with his own. The connection between the pseudo-mysticism which he has built up on the basis of true mysticism, and the method of theology which he is already pursuing, appears here so great, and he follows so closely the rather elastic figures and thoughts provided by the mystical science of the soul, that we are almost tempted, after reading his exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, to ask whether all his intellectual mistakes were not an outcome of his mysticism. The fact is, however, that he began his study of mysticism only after having commenced formulating the principles of his new world of thought. It was only after the ferment had gone on working for a considerable time that he chanced upon certain mystic works. Yet, strange to say, the mysticism with which he then became acquainted was not that German variety which had already been infected with the errors of Master Eckhart, but the sounder mysticism which had avoided the pitfalls. It is a tragic coincidence that mysticism, the most delicate blossom of the theology of the Middle Ages and of true Catholicism, should have served to confirm him in so many errors. True mysticism has in all ages been a protest against all moral cowardice and inertia, against tepidity and self-complacent mediocrity; false mysticism, on the other hand, debases itself to Quietism and even to Antinomianism; the world has lived to see pseudo-mysticism deny evil the better to permit it.[600] Even true mysticism is constantly open to the danger not only of conscious and intentional exaggeration of its theses, but of unintentional misapprehension.
Misapprehension is a misfortune to which mysticism was ever exposed, owing mainly to the inadequacy of human language to express the mystic’s thoughts,[601] whereas Scholasticism, thanks to its clear-cut terminology, has been spared such a fate, and for the same reason has never been in favour with confused and cloudy minds. Tauler had originally been trained in the Scholasticism of St. Thomas of Aquin, and in the teaching of the Frankfort author of the “Theologia Deutsch” the true principles of the old school still shine out. This, however, did not save these writers from having formerly been considered, by Protestants, precursors of Luther’s doctrines. Denifle, by his studies on these and the later mystics, threw such valuable light on the subject that the Protestant theologian Wilhelm Braun, in the work he recently devoted to tracing the development of Luther, says: “it is wrong for Protestants to claim mysticism as a pre-Reformation reforming movement; this Denifle has proved in his epoch-making researches.”[602]
False Passivity
As regards the important new data furnished by the Commentary on Romans on Luther’s mysticism, the editor himself admits in the preface that “the ideal of resignation [preached by the Catholic mystics] was raised by Luther to an unconditional passivity and to a real system of Quietism, which he completely identified with the theme of the Epistle to the Romans and with the piety of St. Augustine. In this he found the bond of union combining all his experiences. Mysticism it is which lends its deep and fiery hue to his thoughts; where Luther is describing the most intimate processes and gives their highest expression to the thoughts which inspire him, it is mysticism which is speaking through him ... the complete and unconditional surrender of man to God.”[603]
Luther gives in a peculiar fashion his reasons for taking such a standpoint: “The Nature of God demands that He should first destroy and annihilate everything there is in us before He imparts His gifts. For it is written: ‘The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich, He bringeth down to hell and bringeth back again.’ By this most gracious plan He renders us fit for the reception of His gifts and His works. We are then receptive to His works and plans when our own plans and our own works have ceased, and we become quite passive towards God (‘quando nostra consilia cessant et opera quiescunt et efficimur pure passivi respectu Dei’) both as regards exterior and interior activity.... Then the ‘utterable sighs’ commence, then ‘the Spirit comes and helps our infirmity.’”[604] It is in the description of this “suffering and bearing of God” that he expressly quotes Tauler as the teacher of the higher form of prayer, adding: “Yes, yes, ‘we know not how we should pray,’ therefore the Spirit is necessary to assist us in our weakness.” “As a woman remains passive in conception, so we must remain passive to the first grace and eternal salvation. For our soul is Christ’s bride. Before grace, it is true, we pray and implore, but when grace comes and the soul is to be impregnated by the Spirit, then it must neither pray nor act, but only endure. To the soul this seems hard and it is downcast, for that the soul should be without act of the understanding and the will, that is much like sinking into darkness, destruction and annihilation (‘in perditionem et annihilationem’); from this prospect she shrinks back in horror, but in so doing she often deprives herself of the most precious gifts of grace.”[605]
It was just on this point that Luther most completely misapprehended Tauler. It is true that this mediæval mystic speaks strongly against any too great esteem of human activity, and that he also recommends the spiritual man, in certain circumstances, to “refuse all exterior works the better to devote himself with the necessary submission and in entire peace” to interior communication with his Maker and Highest Good, and, as he says, “to suffer God.”[606] But he does not thereby recommend man to long after a state without thought or will, or after mere nothingness—in order to magnify God and His powers alone; according to Tauler, grace does not work in the soul “without the co-operation of the understanding and the will.”