We must call to mind that the young and ardent University professor, though deficient in humility and in the capacity to assimilate the sublime teachings of the Epistle to the Romans, stood all the more under the spell of two misleading ideas which had long dominated him, viz. on the one hand, the supposed depth and transforming power of the knowledge of Scripture he had already acquired and, on the other, the need of assailing the self-righteous and hypocritical Little Saints and all excessive esteem for good works. In the latter respect the passages in Romans on works, faith and merit—of which he failed to see the real meaning—became dangerous rocks on which Luther’s earlier religious convictions suffered hopeless shipwreck. So greatly was he attracted and, as it were, fascinated by the light that seemed to him to stream in on his soul from this Epistle, that he came to see the same thing everywhere. Its suggestive power over him was all the greater because in his then pseudo-mystical train of thought he was fond of comparing himself to the Apostle and of fancying, that, as in that case so in his, inner self-annihilation would lead to his receiving similar favours from God. This self-annihilation in Luther’s case was, however, a morbid one.
Luther, in his younger days, had also been grievously tormented with thoughts on predestination. He now fancied, according to what he supposed was Paul’s teaching, that to abandon oneself in the hands of God, without will, strength or wish, was the sole means by which he and all other men could find tranquillity. Thus, on the strength of misunderstood inward experiences, he hailed the Epistle to the Romans and, a little later, the Epistle to the Galatians, as the only guide along the strange paths of his future exegesis.
His supposed “experiences of God” became the ruling power by which, thanks to an exegesis entirely new, he was to bring salvation to the whole of mankind.
Hitherto, in spite of all his diligence in the study of the Bible, any idea of upholding his own new interpretation against the existing doctrines of the Church had been altogether foreign to him. In his first manuscript notes and in the Commentary on the Psalms which has only recently come to light, likewise in his earlier sermons, he still looks at everything from the Catholic standpoint; the Church’s authority is still the appointed guardian and interpreter of Holy Scripture. There the Bible is to him unquestionably the divinely inspired book and the true Word of God, though it is, not the individual’s, but the Church’s duty to draw from its inexhaustible treasures arguments in her own defence and in refutation of the teaching of the heretics. To the teaching of Scripture and to the infallible interpretation of the Church based on the tradition of the Fathers, everyone, so he then held, must submit as Christ Himself had ordained.
Even then, however, he was already convinced that he had received an extraordinary call to deal with Holy Scripture. The very admiration of his fellow-monks for his familiarity with his red leather copy of the Bible, fostered the self-love of the youthful student of the Scriptures. This Staupitz increased by his incautious reference to the future “great Doctor,” and by his general treatment of Luther. The written Word of God in which the wide-awake and quick-witted monk felt himself at home more than any of his fellows quite evidently became so much his own peculiar domain, that, in his opinion, Bible scholarship was the only worthy form of theological learning and ruled every branch of Divine knowledge. He even went further, attributing all the corruption in the Church to “neglect of the Word,” i.e. to ignorance of and want of compliance with the Bible Word. On the strength of his accounted profounder knowledge of the “Word,” he also reproves the “holy-by-works.” Even previous to the lectures on Romans, his conviction of the antithesis between human works and Christ’s grace made him read everywhere Christ into Scripture; the Bible, so he says, must be taken to the well-spring, i.e. to the Cross of Christ, having done which we may then be “quite certain to catch” its true meaning. Before Luther’s day others in the Church had done the same, though within lawful limits. Among contemporary Humanists even Erasmus had insisted on Christ’s being made the centre of Scripture.[1521]
Widely as Luther, in his Commentary on Romans, already diverges from the Church’s interpretation of St. Paul regarding the doctrine of Justification, yet he still admits, at least in theory, the principle of authority both in the interpretation of the Bible and in general.[1522] He rejects without compunction all those heresies which deviate from the Church’s guidance. In practice, however, he sets himself above the teaching of the Fathers where-ever this runs counter to his views; St. Augustine is forced to witness in his favour even at the expense of the other representatives of tradition, and, as for mediæval scholasticism, it is treated as though it were not at all one of the links in the venerable chain of tradition. On the other hand, Luther allows his exegesis to be influenced by those later and less reputable exponents of scholasticism with whom alone he was acquainted.
On such lines as these did his exegesis of the Bible proceed; on the one hand there was his excessive regard for his own acquaintance with Scripture, and, on the other, his pseudo-mysticism leaning for its support on misunderstood interior revelations and illuminations. A certain sense of his vocation as the Columbus of the Bible ever accompanies him from that time forward.
This psychological condition manifests itself in utterances contained in the lectures on Romans and in later works.
“Here,” so he writes in the lectures, “a great stride has been made towards the right interpretation of Holy Scripture, by understanding it all as bearing on Christ ... even when the surface-sense of the letter does not require it.”[1523] “All Scripture deals everywhere with Christ alone.”[1524] “All this is said, written or done that human presumption may be humbled and the grace of God exalted.”[1525] He is ever reading his own thoughts into the oftentimes obscure words of St. Paul, though, that he is so doing is evident neither to his hearers nor to himself. That same eloquence and wealth of imagery are to be found here which are to characterise his later expositions. “Quite unmistakably his language, thought and imagery throughout the work is that of the mystic,” remarks the editor of the Commentary. “How much Tauler—whom Luther extols so highly, even when as yet he was so little acquainted with him—has taken possession of Luther’s mind and influences his language, would be clear from the Commentary on Romans, even were Tauler’s name not mentioned in it.”[1526]
With the mental attitude assumed quite early in his career the scant regard for Humanism and philosophy he evinces in this Commentary well agrees; further, his use of the Bible as a whip with which to lash unsparingly the abuses rampant in the Church, another peculiarity which was to remain in his treatment of Scripture. The better to appreciate his first attempts at exegesis we may recall, that, even then, he was concerned for the text and its purity, and that, no sooner was Erasmus’s Greek edition of the New Testament published, than Luther, who had now reached chapter ix. of the Epistle, began to use it for his lectures.[1527]