At a later date he described to his friends how he had learnt to understand Scripture “in maximis agonibus et tentationibus”; it was thus he had found in the Bible the Divinity of Christ and the articles on the Trinity; even now he was more certain of these truths by experience than by faith.[1437] Even the absolute predestination of the damned to hell, the entire absence of free-will for doing what is good and other extravagant opinions questioned even by his own followers, he declares he had learned directly from the Bible. In 1534 he places Scripture side by side with inward experience (or the Spirit), as the warrant—even in the case of others—for all knowledge of things Divine.
This he likewise applies to the Apostles’ Creed.[1438] In 1537 he said in a sermon at Schmalkalden, “not only did all this [what is professed in the Creed] take place as we read in the Word of the Gospel, but the Holy Ghost also writes it inwardly in our heart.”[1439] He accepts the teaching of the Apostles’ Creed because he has convinced himself that it is based on Holy Writ.[1440] But how if others are not thus convinced? Were they too to be fastened to the dogma?
R. Seeberg gives a good account of Luther’s views on the character of the dogmas of the ancient Church.[1441] “He treats the symbols of the ancient Church with great respect, particularly the Apostles’ Creed which contains all the chief articles of faith.[1442] But this does not mean that he believes in each creed or Council as such.” “In his work ‘Von den Conciliis’ with masterly historical criticism [?] he denies all binding authority even to the ancient Councils”; even the Council of the Apostles passed resolutions which were afterwards rescinded, and so did the Nicene Council. “Dogma is true,” so runs Luther’s teaching as given by Seeberg, “only so far as it agrees with Scripture; in itself it is of no authority. But the truth of Scripture is one that is attested interiorly. Hence we can say that the Holy Ghost produces in us the assurance of the true doctrine [of the Apostles’ Creed].”[1443]—The page-heading where these words occur runs: “Luther’s independence of dogma.”
A highly important statement on the interior instruction that goes on when we read Scripture is contained in Luther’s quite early work “De Captivitate Babylonica” (1520): The soul, he says there, referring to a misunderstood passage of St. Augustine’s on a well-known fact in the natural order, is so affected by the truth, that, thanks to it, it is able to judge rightly and surely of all things; it is forced to confess with unfailing certitude that this is the truth, just as reason affirms with unfailing certitude that three and seven make ten; the same is the case with all real Christians and their spiritual sense which, according to 1 Cor. ii. 15, judges all things and is judged of no man.[1444]—The last words of the Apostle refer, however, to the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, bestowed for a while by God on some few Christians in the early days of the Church, and cannot apply to the ordinary conditions of later times.
Luther simply ignores the objection, that, if every man is judge, unutterable discord must ensue. The way in which he contrived so long to conceal this from himself is psychologically remarkable. For instance, in one of the principal passages where this objection should have been faced, viz. in his work against King Henry VIII, he glosses over the difficulty with the assertion that, even under the Pope, there was also no unity of doctrine; he then consoles himself with the words of Christ (John vi.), that all true Christians “shall be taught of God” and that every one that hath heard the Father cometh to the Saviour; the Spirit of God makes all to be one and effects an “idem docere, idem confiteri, idem sequi.”—We can only wonder at the idealism that could expect such results in a world inhabited by human beings.—In the end, however, since this was scarcely to be looked for, “external unity would be sufficiently safeguarded by the one Baptism and one Supper,” whereby all “testify to the oneness of their faith and spirit.”[1445] At any rate, he is confident that the true explanation (viz. his own) of the truths of salvation will gain the upper hand. For the Church cannot perish.
In point of fact Luther really fancies himself justified in appealing to this entirely new meaning put by him on the promise to the Church that she shall never perish; she is indestructible because true believers will always be there to maintain Luther’s interpretation of revelation and of the imputed righteousness of Christ, and because any general falling away from the truth is not to be thought of. Even though very many, indeed the greater number, deny the true Scripture teaching, still, many others remain, as, of yore, the seven thousand when Israel fell away from God. According to him even these may be held captive all their life in some error concerning the faith and reach the right road and faith in the grace of Christ only on their death-bed, according to the promise in John x. 28.[1446] In view of the darkness prevalent in former ages this appears to him to suffice in order to enable us to say that the Church has not really perished,[1447] and to save the cause of private enlightenment on the Bible. For this must stand fast, viz. that the Spirit of God most surely bears witness to the contents of the Divine Word in the hearts of the hearers and readers. “Luther,” says a Protestant exponent of his theology, “laid this down time after time.” “His statements on this subject cannot fail, however, to raise certain questions in our minds.”[1448]
They gave rise to questions in his own day, and to something more than mere questions. The bitter theological dissensions already hinted at were the result. The inevitable divergency in the interpretation of the Bible was seen everywhere, and a hundred different opinions, some based on the inward assurance given by the “Spirit of God,” some on the reflections of reason, took the field. We know to what an extent Luther had to suffer from the discord born of his principle, not merely from such comparatively unimportant persons as Jacob Schenk[1449] and his “disgracefully arrogant” colleague, Johann Agricola, not merely from the fanatics and Anabaptists who found in the Bible a different teaching on Baptism, divine worship and morality, or from the Zwinglians with their divergent biblical interpretation of the Eucharist, but even, so to speak, in his own family, from Melanchthon, who was rash enough to incline to the Swiss reformed doctrines and to fight shy of the stricter Lutheranism. “The presumption,” Luther declares, strangely enough, “is really unbearable, that people should rise up against the authority of the Church,” despise the teaching of the best and ablest, and only worship their own views in Holy Scripture. “The name of the Church should be held in high honour.”[1450] He forbore, however, to specify which Church he meant, and moreover he had set himself above every Church. “All other forms of arrogance,” he declares, “can be endured and allow of improvement, as in the healing art, in philosophy, in poetry, in mechanics and in the case of the young.... But that shocking ‘arrogantia theologiæ’ is the source of all evil, and a consuming fire.”[1451]
So little did he succeed in repressing “theological arrogance,” but rather, by his action, threw open the doors to it, that in 1525 he was forced to lament:[1452] “There are as many sects and beliefs as there are heads. This fellow will have nothing to do with baptism, another denies the Sacrament, a third believes that there is another world between this and the Last Day. Some teach that Christ is not God, some say this, some that.... There is now no rustic so rude but that, if he dreams or fancies anything, it must be the whisper of the Holy Ghost and he himself a prophet.... There is no one who does not wish to be cleverer than Luther; they all want to try their steel on me.... They speak like madmen; I have during the year to listen to many such wretched folk. In no other way can the devil come so close to me, that I must admit. Formerly the world was full of noisy, disembodied spirits giving themselves out to be the souls of men; now it is full of uproarious spirits with bodies, who all declare that they are real angels.”[1453]
He has this crumb of comfort: The world is the devil’s playground; and uproars there must be.[1454]
“This is all due,” he says finally, truly and aptly, “to their bringing their conceit with them to the study of Scripture, which has to submit to being judged, moulded and led by their head and reason,”[1455]—surely a bitter punishment for throwing over the divinely appointed authority of the Church, which decides on the sense of the Bible.