Luther, vol. 2 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

In any case, Luther at that time made use of “every artifice to prove that it was the right of each individual Christian to judge of the preaching of the Gospel and of the avoiding of false prophets.”[264]

In those early days Luther was so full of the ideal of the congregation that, in order to support it, he even appeals to the natural law. In order to save souls every congregation, government or individual has by nature the right to make every effort to drive away the wolves, i.e. the clergy of Antichrist; no apathy can be permitted where it is a question of eternal salvation; the alleged rights and the handed-down possessions of the foes, on which they base their corruptive influence, must not be spared: “We must not fall upon and seize the temporal possessions of others, above all not of our superiors—except where it is a question of doctrine and the salvation of souls; but if the Gospel is not preached, the spiritual authorities have no right to the revenues.”[265] “According to Luther,” says Hermelink, “the authorities of Altenburg had a perfect right to drive away the Provost and his people from Altenburg as ravening wolves”; they were only to wait “a little” to see whether the monks would hold their tongues or perhaps even preach the pure Gospel. When thereupon Luther cries: “Their authority is at an end, abrogated by God Himself, if it be in conflict with the Gospel,”[266] Hermelink admits the presence of a certain “antagonism between the right of each individual Christian and the common law of society.”

Luther, however, generally prefers to give expression to other less violent thoughts anent the building up of the congregations to be formed from the Church of Antichrist.

The holy Brotherhood of the Spirit, he says in his idealistic way, was to arise, knowing no constraint but only charity, and having a ministry (“ministerium”), but no “power.”[267] “The freedom of the Spirit which must reign, makes things which are merely corporal and earthly, indifferent and not necessary.” “All things are indifferent and free (‘omnia sunt indifferentia et libera’).” “Paul demands the preservation of unity, but this is unity of the spirit, not of place, of persons, of things or of bodies.”[268] We here again note the advent of that mysticism which had formerly dragged him down to the depths of a passive indifference. How these pseudo-mystical ideas were to further the building up of the new ecclesiastical system it is hard to understand.

The Brotherhood, however, is not intended to introduce an altogether new ecclesiastical system. We are simply “Christians,” the true Christians, members of the Churches which have always existed, but purified from a thousand years of deformation. “To create sects is stupid and useless”;[269] according to Luther, it is not even necessary for the task of uniting under the Christian name, before the end of the world, all the faithful and the pious consciences elected from the Kingdom of Antichrist.

At that time he wished all his followers to be known simply as “Christians”; and in the first days of the Protestant Churches he very frequently makes use of this term.[270] Even at a later date he was loath to hear them called after himself, in spite of his practical action to the contrary, because they “share with the rest the common teaching of Christ.”[271] The term “Evangelicals” does not appear to have been much in use in Luther’s immediate surroundings.[272] As “Christians” and “Evangelicals” they had not left the “Church,” indeed, Luther always insists on the fact that it was they who really constituted and represented the “Church.” According to the Augsburg Confession in 1530 they belonged to the Catholic Church; they wished to define their position rather as that of a party within the Church, fighting for its existence, a party which accepted the Church’s recognised articles of belief, sheltered itself under the testimony of recognised Catholic authorities, and which had merely introduced certain innovations for the removal of the abuses which had crept in.[273]

Although, according to Luther, the inward organisation of the Brotherhood referred to above was a matter of indifference, and the approaching end of the world admonished him to suffer and wait to see what Christ willed to do with it, yet we read in other passages of his writings that it is necessary to work and to make great efforts to provide every city with a bishop or elder to preach the Gospel; “every Christian” is bound to help towards this end, both by personal exertion and with his goods, and more particularly the secular power, the authorities, whose duty it is to protect the pious. Those who are now already parsons may, indeed must, at once “withdraw from their obedience, seeing that they promised obedience to the devil and not to God.”[274]

This is certainly “something more than passive suffering and waiting for the end.”[275]

The apostasy of the clergy, which had begun, made the question of definite, external organisation a pressing one, for the new preachers and the clergy who were coming over had, after all, to be responsible to someone and had also to be maintained; it was also necessary that they and their followers should receive external recognition for their Churches and extricate themselves from the numerous ties which united so closely the spiritual with the secular in Catholic life. The appointment of pastors and the representation of the faithful by them was one of the factors which called for further organisation of the Churches: another factor, as we may notice in the case of Wittenberg, was the manner of celebrating the Supper. It was, as a matter of fact, the trouble at Wittenberg under Carlstadt which impelled Luther to take into serious consideration the establishment of an independent ecclesiastical organisation in that town, and which called for a definite system of appointing the Lutheran pastors even elsewhere, so as to prevent Carlstadt’s followers from getting the upper hand throughout the country.