Luther, vol. 4 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

In this letter he assumes the whole responsibility for the publication, and assures Melanchthon that “no one has written better than you on Paul.” “I hold that the Commentaries of Jerome and Origen are the merest nonsense and rubbish compared with your exposition.... They, and Thomas too, wrote commentaries that are filled with their own conceits rather than with that which is Paul’s or Christ’s, whereas on the contrary yours teaches us how to read Scripture and to know Christ, and thus excels any mere commentary, which is more than one can say of the others hitherto in vogue.”

Such praise for Melanchthon’s work, indirectly intended to recoil upon his own doctrine, caused Erasmus to remark of the Preface: “How full of pride it is!”[1543]

The doctrine of the unfreedom of the will as here expressed by Melanchthon who then was still the true mouthpiece of Luther, though free from Luther’s rhetorical exaggerations, remains extremely harsh.

It contains, for instance, the following propositions: “Everything in every creature occurs of necessity.... It must be firmly held that everything, both good and bad, is done by God.” “God does not merely allow His creatures to act, but it is He Himself Who acts.” As He does what is good, so also He does what is indifferent in man, such as eating and drinking and the other animal functions, and also what is evil, “such as David’s adultery and Manlius’s execution of his son.” The treason of Judas was not merely permitted of God, but, as Augustine says, was the effect of His power. “It is a huge blasphemy to deny predestination, the actuality of which we have briefly proved above.”[1544]

Ten years later Melanchthon had grown shy of views so monstrous; he thought it advisable to repudiate this book, and, in 1532, he dedicated a new Commentary on Romans to the Archbishop of Mayence, whom he was anxious to win over. In the preface he says, that he no longer acknowledged (“plane non agnosco”)[1545] the earlier work which had appeared under his name. Later, after Luther’s death, he went so far as to demand the severe punishment of those who denied free-will and questioned the need of good works for salvation.[1546]

Luther, on the other hand, as we know, never relinquished his standpoint on the doctrine of free-will. Beside his statements already quoted may be put the following: The will is not only unfree “in everything,”[1547] but is so greatly depraved by original sin, that, not content with being entirely passive in the matter of Justification, it actually resists God like the devil. “What I say is, that the spiritual powers are not merely depraved, but altogether annihilated by sin, not less in man than in the devils.... Their reason and their will seek those things alone which are opposed to God. Whatever is in our will is evil and whatever is in our reason is mere error and blindness. Thus, in things Divine, man is nothing but darkness, error and depravity, his will is evil and his understanding nowhere.”[1548]

From such a standpoint all that was possible was a mere outward imputation of the merits of Christ, no Justification in the sense in which it was taken by the ancient Church, viz. as a supernatural regeneration by means of sanctifying grace.

Any reliable proofs, theological or biblical, in support of this altogether novel view of Justification will be sought for in vain in the works of Melanchthon and Luther. When Luther speaks of the power of faith in the merits of Christ and of the promises of faith concerning eternal life, as he does, for instance, in the written defence which he handed to Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, his words and the Bible passages he quotes merely express what the Church had always taught concerning the necessity and efficacy of faith as the condition of the supernatural life to be further developed in the soul by God’s Grace and man’s co-operation.[1549] In spite of this, in that very writing he alleges that he has satisfactorily proved that Justification is effected by fiducial faith.

“No one can be justified,” he there writes, “but by faith, in the sense that he must needs believe with a firm faith (‘certa fide credere’) that he is justified, and not doubt in any way that he is to attain to grace; for if he doubts and is uncertain, he will not be justified, rather he spits out the grace.”[1550]