Luther, vol. 1 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

The Quenching of the “Good Spark in the Soul”

Luther in the above recommendation to passivity falsely assumes that the soul is entirely corrupted by original sin and only offends God with its acts. This also appears clearly in the Commentary on Romans. Protestants themselves now admit that Luther deviated from the standpoint of the orthodox mystics, particularly from that of Tauler, and that “in the view of the mystics of the Middle Ages there is no doubt that the natural good in man outweighs the natural evil. The central point in which all the lines of mystic theology converge is this indestructible goodness.” So speaks a Protestant theologian.[607]

In Gerson, the mystic whom Luther had studied in his early days at Erfurt, he must have met with the beautiful teaching, that the soul had received from God a natural tendency towards what is good, that this is “the virginal portion of the soul,” which is the “source and seat of mystical theology.”[608] Tauler is fond of treating of this “noble spark of fire in the soul,” of “this interior nobility which lies hidden in the depths.”[609] The Scholastics, too, unanimously teach this disposition to good which remains after original sin.

Luther, when opposing the good tendency, attacks only the Scholastics, not the mystics; he declares that all the errors on grace and nature which he has to withstand entered through the hole which the Scholastics made with their “syntheresis.”[610] One thing is certain, viz. that he was wrong in foisting his view of the absolute corruption of the human race on the mystics; “he could not,” the Protestant theologian above referred to admits, “quite truthfully invoke the support of the mystics for his assertions.”[611] The doctrines which Tauler advances in the very context in which his blame of the self-righteous occurs, viz. that there is no righteousness without personal acts, that even the sinner can do what is good, that he, more especially, must prepare himself for the grace of justification, pass unheeded in Luther’s exposition of the Epistle to the Romans. “Luther overlooked this series [of testimonies given by Tauler]; only the statements regarding the righteous by works made any impression on him; his polemics are directed against those who serve two masters, who wish to please God and the world and to do great things for God’s sake; these are the people who are at heart satisfied with themselves.”[612]

Tauler repeatedly uses the word “spirit” for man’s native good tendency and activity. This expression Luther simply takes to mean the Divine Spirit, which must be infused into man on account of his natural helplessness. The theologian mentioned above hero also admits: “Much that Tauler intended to refer to the human syntheresis, or the created spirit, Luther has ascribed to the uncreated Divine Spirit, who imparts grace and faith”;[613] on the other hand we may allow with the same author that Luther was probably misled by the “hermaphrodism of Tauler’s teaching, according to which the spirit longs for a metamorphosis”; Tauler’s lively description of the supernatural being and life of the soul sometimes throws into the background the independence of its action in the natural sphere, though the outcome is not really an “hermaphrodite” in the strict sense of the word. It is also true that “Luther overlooked the other side, namely, the Divine immanence which all those mystics teach with equal distinctness,[614] or at least he did not make sufficient account of it.

Selfishness and the “Theology of the Cross”

Another important point on which Luther deviated from true mysticism has now been brought to light by the Commentary on Romans. According to the Strasburg mystic, and according to all good mystics generally, selfishness must be looked on as the greatest interior enemy of man. It is a leaven which readily infects the actions, even of the best, and therefore must be expelled by struggling against it and by prayer.

Selfishness, says the “Theologia Deutsch,” “makes the creature turn away from the unchangeable good to that which is changeable.” Even in the case of the devil, it tells us, the reason of his fall was “his I and my, his mine and me”; he fancied he was something, that something belonged to him and that he had a right to something.[615]