The interpretation of the Sacred Books, in his view, takes place under the illumination of the Holy Ghost, and such an illumination he claimed first and foremost for himself. “Any believer who has better grounds and authority from Scripture on his side, is more to be believed than the Pope or a whole Council.”[1369]
Liberty for the Examination of Scripture and Luther’s Autonomy.
Luther only gradually reached his teaching concerning the supremacy of Holy Scripture.
His examination at Augsburg drew forth from him his first statements on this subject. In the postscript to his own report of the interview he places Holy Scripture first amongst the theological sources, adding that it was merely being corrupted by the so-called sacred Decrees of the Church;[1370] in his appeal to the Council he also places the Bible and its decision (i.e. his interpretation) above the Pope. Even then, however, he admitted the authority of the Council side by side with that of the Bible only in so far as he confidently looked to the Council for a decision in his favour. The fact that about this time he fancied he could descry Antichrist in the Pope reveals at once the wide gulf he was about to create between all ecclesiastical authority and Scripture privately interpreted.—Without having as yet formally proclaimed the new principle on Holy Scripture, he nevertheless declared at the Leipzig Disputation, that Scripture ranked above a Council,[1371] and that Œcumenical Councils had already erred in matters of faith. Only when driven into a corner by his defence of the heresy of Hus, and after fruitless evasions, were these admissions wrung from him by Eck. Any light thus thrown on the matter by the Catholic speaker was, however, at once obscured by the following ambiguous clause added by Luther: “Councils have erred, and may err, particularly on points which do not appertain to faith.”[1372]
Immediately after the Leipzig Disputation, in a letter addressed by himself and Carlstadt to the Elector, Luther lays it down that “a layman with the Scripture on his side is more to be believed in than the Pope and a Council without Scripture.”[1373] Then, in the “Resolutiones super propositionibus Lipsiæ disputatis,” he gives utterance to an assertion behind which he seeks to shelter his views: “Faith does not originate in authority but is produced in the heart only by the Holy Ghost, though man is indeed moved to faith by word and example.”[1374]
Yet, as though he himself wished to demonstrate the perils his new principle involved, not merely for the interpretation of the Bible but even for the integrity of the Sacred Books, he makes in the very same writing, on ostensibly intrinsic grounds, his famous onslaught on the Epistle of St. James which had been urged against him. Because this canonical Epistle tells against his doctrine of Justification, he will have it that, “its style is far beneath the dignity of an Apostle and is not to be compared with that of Paul.”[1375] Already at the Leipzig Disputation he had attacked the second Book of the Machabees, which did not suit his views, again for intrinsic reasons and because it ran counter to true doctrine; the Church had indeed admitted it into the Canon, but “she could not raise the status of a book nor impart to it a higher value than it actually possessed.”[1376]
From that time forward Luther gives the most varied expression to the principle of the free interpretation of Scripture: He declares, that the Bible may be interpreted by everyone, even by the “humble miller’s maid, nay, by a child of nine if it has the faith.”[1377] “The sheep must judge whether the pastors teach in Christ’s own tone.”[1378] “Christ alone, and none other than the Crucified, do we acknowledge as our Master. Paul will not have us believe him or an angel (Gal. i. 8, 12) unless Christ lives and speaks in him.” He is at pains to inform “the senseless Sophists, the unlearned bishops, monks and priests, the Pope and all his Gomorrahs” that we were baptised, not in the name of any Father of the Church, “but in the name of Jesus Christ.”[1379]
“That a Christian assembly or congregation has the right and the power to judge of doctrine and to appoint and dismiss preachers” is the title of one of Luther’s writings of 1523.[1380] Later we meet the downright declaration: “Neither Church, nor Fathers, nor Apostles, nor angels are to be listened to except so far as they teach the pure Word of God (‘nisi afferant et doceant purum verbum Dei’).”[1381]
In his bias against his foes he does not pause to consider that the very point at issue is to discern what the “pure Word of God” is, for, where it exists, any opposition on the part of “Church, Fathers and Apostles” is surely inconceivable. It is merely an echo of his early mystic theories when, in a dreamy sort of way, he hints, that the pure Word manifests itself to each believer and reveals itself to the world without the intervention of any outward authority. It was clearly mere prejudice in his own favour which led him to be ruled by the one idea that the “pure Word of God” was to be found nowhere but in his own reading of the Bible.