In the Commentary on Romans Luther also speaks in impressive words against selfishness and its malice.[616] He makes use of every note at his command in order to warn us against this serpent. In these passages we might fancy we hear the voices of the mystic leaders of the faithful in the Middle Ages, even of a Bernard of Clairvaux. Nor is practical advice wanting; we are exhorted to earnest, humble prayer, to a watchful resistance—to be strengthened by practice—against the desires of self-love, even in small things, to mortify and to tame our flesh. We must go out of ourselves even in spiritual matters; everything, he says, depends in the spiritual life on self-abnegation: “God’s righteousness fills those only who seek to empty themselves of their own righteousness, He fills the hungry and the thirsty ... let us then tell God, so he says with all the enthusiasm his idea of grace gives him: “how glad are we to be empty, that Thou mayest be our fulness; how glad to be weak, that Thy strength may dwell within us; how glad to be sinners, that Thou mayest be justified in us; how glad to be fools, that Thou mayest be our wisdom; how glad to be unrighteous, that Thou mayest be our righteousness.”[617] Suffering sent by God, so the author frequently repeats almost in Tauler’s words, is to be accepted as a remedy against the disease of self-love not only with patience, but with joy. Pain, particularly inward pain, should be honoured like the cross of Christ (“tribulatio velut crux Christi adoranda”);[618] we must bear it bravely like true children of God and not take to flight like the servant, or the hireling.[619]
In connection with selfishness Luther exposes his so-called “theologia crucis,” which, with the adjuncts he gives it, is quite in keeping with his ideas. He was also to advocate the theology of the cross in his disputations, endeavouring to show that it alone teaches us how to make a right use of earthly things.
“He is not a Christian, but a Turk, and an enemy of Christ, who does not desire afflictions.” “Our theologians and popes are in fact enemies of the cross of Christ ... for no one hates pain and trouble more than the popes and the lawyers [i.e. those who insist upon laws and observances]. No one is more greedy than they for riches, comfort, idleness, honour and pomp.” “They honour the relics of the Holy Cross and yet abhor and fly from what they dislike.” “We consider Christ our helper and our support in time of trouble, but whoever does not suffer gladly, cheats Him of these titles; to such a one God even is no longer the Creator because he will not return to the nothingness from which God created all. Whoever will not suffer God in weakness, foolishness and punishment, for him God is not powerful, not wise, not merciful.”[620] “The cross puts to death everything that is in us. Nature, it is true, desires to make itself and everything alive, but God in His love takes care, by the infliction of crosses and suffering, that even spiritual gifts shall not taste too sweet to the righteous; he must not throw himself upon them in a natural, godless impetuosity in order to enjoy them, even though they be attractive and tempt him to savour them ... he may not even love God on account of His grace and His gifts, but only for His own sake, otherwise this would be a forbidden [!] indulgence in the grace received, and he would insult the Father even more than he did before [i.e. when as yet unrighteous!]. In the Commentary on Romans Luther refuses to recognise any love save that which springs from the most perfect motive. He stigmatises the love which arises from the joy in the benefits bestowed by a gracious God,—and which the orthodox mystics allowed,—as presumption, and as an enjoyment of the creature rather than of the Creator, and goes so far as to say that if a man were to remain in this love “he would be lost eternally.”[621]
To these assertions we may add the following theses, defended under Luther’s auspices in 1518, which explain the new “theologia crucis.” “Whoever is not destroyed (‘destructus’) and brought back by the cross and suffering to the state of nothingness, attributes to himself works and wisdom, but not to his God, and so he abuses and dishonours the gifts of God. But whoever is annihilated by suffering (‘exinanitus’) ceases to do anything, knowing that God is working in him and doing all. Therefore, whether he himself does anything or not, he remains the same, and neither vaunts himself for doing something nor is ashamed of doing nothing, because God works in him. For himself, this he knows, it is enough that he should suffer and be destroyed by the cross, so that he may advance more and more towards annihilation. This is what Christ teaches in John iii. 3: ‘Ye must be born again.’ If we are to be born again, we must first die and be raised with the Son of God [on the cross]; I say die, i.e. taste death as though it were present.”[622] “We may not fly from human wisdom and the law, but whoever is without the theology of the cross is making the worst use of the best things. The true theologian is not he who understands the ‘invisible things of God by the things that are made,’ but he who by suffering and the cross recognises in God the visible and the obscure.”[623]
The Night of the Soul and Resignation to Hell
The better to fight against selfishness Tauler had proposed that everyone should look upon himself and his own works as evil, imitating a certain holy brother who used to say: “Know that I am the basest of sinners.”[624] In this innocent recommendation nothing is implied of the complete corruption of nature, of a desire for hell, or of resignation to eternal separation from God. It was only as an exercise in humility and penitent love that Tauler and the other mystics wished the devout man to cultivate the habit of looking on himself as absolutely unworthy of heaven and as better fitted for a place in hell. He is urged to descend in spirit to the place of torment and acknowledge, against his egotism and arrogance, that, on account of his sins, he has deserved a place there among the damned, and not in the happy vicinity of God.
They also depict in gloomy, mystical colours the condition of the unhappy soul who, by the consent of God and in order to try it, sees itself deprived of all comfort, and, as it were, torn away from its highest good and relegated to hell. Such pains, they teach, are intended as a way of purgation for the soul, which, after such a night, can raise itself again with all the more confidence and love to God, who has, so far, preserved it from so great a misfortune.
The doctrine of the dark, mystical night appealed very strongly to Luther’s mind. In his theology he is fond of picturing the soul as utterly sinful and deserving of hell, meaning by this something very different from what orthodox mystics taught. He also suffered greatly at times from inward commotion and darkening of the soul, due to fears regarding predestination, to a troubled conscience or to morbid depression, of which the cause was perhaps bodily rather than mental. These, however, bore no resemblance to the pains—“mystical exercises” as they have been called by Protestants—of which the mystics speak. In his “temptations in the monastery” he did not experience what Tauler and the “Theologia Deutsch” narrate of the consuming inner fire of Purgatory. Luther, however, erroneously applied their descriptions to his own condition.[625] Thus his idea of the night of the soul is quite different from that of the mystics, though he describes it in almost the same words, and, thanks to his imagination and eloquence, possibly in even more striking colours.
Several times in his Commentary on Romans he represents resignation to, indeed even an actual desire for, damnation—should that be the will of God—as something grand and sublime. Thereby he thinks he is teaching the highest degree of resignation to God’s inscrutable will; thereby the highest step on the ladder of self-abnegation has been attained. In reality it is an ideal of a frightful character, far worse even than a return to nothingness. He lets us see here, as he does so often in other matters, how greatly his turbulent spirit inclined to extremes.[626]