Luther, vol. 2 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

That Luther, at the Diet of Worms, bore away the palm as the heroic defender of entire freedom of research and of conscience, and as the champion of the modern spirit, is a view not in accordance with a fair historical consideration of the facts.

He himself was then, and all through life, far removed from the idea of any freedom of conscience in the modern sense, and would have deemed all who dared to use it against Divine Revelation, as later opponents of religion did, as deserving of the worst penalties of the mediæval code. “It is an altogether one-sided view, one, indeed, which wilfully disregards the facts, to hail in Luther the man of the new age, the hero of enlightenment and the creator of the modern spirit.” Such is the opinion of Adolf Harnack.[176]

At Worms, Luther spoke of himself as being bound by the Word of God. It is true he claimed the freedom of interpreting Holy Scripture according to his own mind, or, as he said, according to the understanding bestowed on him by God, and of amending all such dogmas as displeased him.

But he would on no account cease to acknowledge that a revealed Word of God exists and claims submission from the human mind, whereas, from the standpoint of the modern free-thinker, there is no such thing as revelation. The liberty of interpreting revelation, which Luther proclaimed at Worms, or, to be more exact, calmly assumed, marked, it is true, a great stride forward in the road to the destruction of the Church.

Luther failed to point out at Worms how such liberty, or rather licence, agreed with the institutions established by Christ for the preservation and perpetual preaching of His doctrine of salvation. He was confronted by a Church, still recognised throughout the whole public life of the nations, which claimed as her own a Divine authority and commission to interpret the written Word of God. She was to the Faithful the lighthouse by which souls struggling in the waves of conflicting opinions might safely steer their course. In submitting his own personal opinion to the solemn judgment of an institution which had stood the test of time since the days of Christ and the Apostles, the Wittenberg Professor had no reason to fear any affront to his dignity. Whoever submitted to the Church accepted her authority as supreme, but he did not thereby forfeit either his freedom or his dignity; he obeyed in order not to expose himself to doubt or error; he pledged himself to a higher, and better, wisdom than he was able to reach by his own strength, by the way of experience, error and uncertainty. The Church plainly intimated to the heresiarch the error of his way, pointing out that the freedom of interpretation which he arrogated to himself was the destruction of all sure doctrine, the death-blow to the truth handed down, the tearing asunder of religious union, and the harbinger of endless dissensions.—We here see where Luther’s path diverged from that followed by Catholics. He set up subjectivity as a principle, and preached, together with the freedom of interpreting Scripture, the most unfettered revolt against all ecclesiastical authority, which alone can guarantee the truth. The chasm which he cleft still yawns; hence the difference of opinion concerning the sentence pronounced at Worms. We are not at liberty to conceal this fact from ourselves, nor can we wonder at the conflicting judgments passed on the position then assumed by Luther.

We may perhaps be permitted to quote a Protestant opinion which throws some light on Luther’s “championship of entire freedom of conscience.” It is that of an experienced observer of the struggles of those days, Friedrich Paulsen: “The principle of 1521, viz. to allow no authority on earth to dictate the terms of faith, is anarchical; with it no Church can exist.... The starting-point and the justification of the whole Reformation consisted in the complete rejection of all human authority in matters of faith.... If, however, a Church is to exist, then the individual must subordinate himself and his belief to the body as a whole. To do this is his duty, for religion can only exist in a body, i.e. in a Church.”[177] ... “Revolution is the term by which the Reformation should be described ... Luther’s work was no Reformation, no ‘reforming’ of the existing Church by means of her own institutions, but the destruction of the old shape, in fact, the fundamental negation of any Church at all. He refused to admit any earthly authority in matters of faith, and regarding morals his position was practically the same; he left the matter entirely to the individual conscience.... Never has the possibility of the existence of any ecclesiastical authority whatsoever been more rudely denied.”[178]

“It is true that this is not the whole Luther,” he continues. “The same Luther who here advocates ecclesiastical ‘anarchy’ at a later date was to oppose those whose conscience placed another interpretation on God’s Word than that discovered in it by the inhabitants of Wittenberg.” Paulsen quotes certain sentences in which Luther, shortly afterwards, denounced all deviations from his teaching: “My cause is God’s cause,” and “my judgment is God’s judgment,” and proceeds: “Nothing was left for the Reformers, if there was to be a Church at all, but to set up their own authority in place of the authority of the Popes and the Councils. Only on one tiresome point are they at a disadvantage, anyone being free to appeal from the later Luther to the Luther of Worms.” “Just as people are inclined to reject external authority, so they are ready to set up their own. This is one of the roots from which spring the desire for freedom and the thirst for power. It was not at all Luther’s way to consider the convictions of others as of equal importance with his own.” This he clearly demonstrated in the autocratic position which he claimed for the Wittenberg theology as soon as the “revolutionary era of the Reformation had passed.”

“The argument which Luther had employed in 1521 against the Papists, i.e. that it was impossible to confute him from Scripture, he found used against himself in his struggle with the ‘fanatics’ who also urged that no one could prove them wrong by Scripture.... For the confuting of heretics a Rule of faith is necessary, a living one which can decide questions as they arise.... One who pins his faith to what Luther did in 1521 might well say: If heretics cannot be confuted from Scripture, this would seem to prove that God does not attach much importance to the confutation of heretics; otherwise He would have given us His Revelation in catechisms and duly balanced propositions instead of in Gospels and Epistles, in Prophets and Psalms.... On the one hand there can be no authority on earth in matters of faith, and on the other there must be such an authority, such is the antinomy which lies at the foundation of the Protestant Church.... A contradiction exists in the very essence of Protestantism. On the one hand the very idea of a Church postulates oneness of faith manifested by submission; on the other the conviction that if faith in the Protestant sense is to exist at all, then each person must answer for himself; ... it is my faith alone which helps me, and if my faith does not agree with the faith and doctrine of others, I cannot for that reason abandon it.... The fact is, there has never been a revolution conducted on entirely logical lines.”[179]

That “authority in matters of faith” which Luther began to claim for himself, did not prevent him in the ensuing years from insisting on the right of private judgment, though all the while he was interpreting biblical Revelation in accordance with his own views. As time went on he became, however, much more severe towards the heretics who diverged from his own standpoint. But this was only when the “revolutionary era of the Reformation,” as Paulsen calls it, was over and gone. So long as it lasted he would not and could not openly refuse to others what he claimed for himself. Even in 1525 we find him declaring that “the authorities must not interfere with what each one wishes to teach and to believe, whether it be the Gospel or a lie.” He is here speaking of the authorities, but his own conduct in the matter of tolerating heretics was even then highly inconsistent, to say nothing of toleration of Catholics.