The ravings of the fanatics repeatedly furnished him with an occasion to emphasise good works more strongly and even to speak of a faith working by love.
His dislike for their lawless behaviour and their praise of the Spirit, to some extent directed against ordinary works, called him into the arena. To call back the disturbers to a more moral life and to the considerations of charity, he appealed to them to “exercise themselves in the faith that worketh by charity” (Gal. v. 6). Even the Epistle of James now appeared to him good enough to quote, particularly the verse (i. 22): “Be ye doers of the the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves”; from this Epistle he also borrows the comparison of a dead faith, viz. of a faith not made living through charity, with the face as seen in a glass, which is merely the semblance of a countenance and not the reality.[1690]
It was the fanatics again who in 1530 drew from him some eloquent statements in favour of good works, because, so he said, they had misrepresented his doctrine that “Good works neither make a man pious nor blot out sin.” They said “they would give their good works for a groat,” and that all good works were not worth a peppercorn. Here he professes to see great danger in contempt for good works and the perversion of his teaching by the “devil’s lying tongue.” Good works, according to him, are rather to be esteemed very highly because they are God’s own. “If it is a good work, then God has wrought it in and by me”; “it was done for the honour and glory of God and for the profit and salvation of my neighbour.” He himself had been far from questioning this and had merely taught that works did not conduce to piety, i.e. “to justify the soul and to placate God”; this, on the contrary, was “entirely the work of the One true God and of His grace.”[1691]
Just as during his public career Luther looked upon such statements as all the more useful seeing they blunted the edge of the awkward inferences drawn from the new Evangel, and served to vindicate his action from the charge of loosening the bonds of morality, so, at the close of his days, he was obliged in a similar way to hark back to the defence of good works against Antinomianism, of which the principal spokesman was Johann Agricola. It is true that the Antinomians based their contempt for the Law, which they said was harmful, and for the excessive respect for commandments and good works which, according to them, still prevailed, on nothing less than Luther’s own teaching. In reality it was to his advantage that their exaggerations forced him to explain away much that he had said, or at least to exercise greater caution. The encounter with Agricola the Antinomian will be described later (vol. v., xxix., 3). In spite of his being thus compelled to take the Law and good works under his wing in this controversy, Luther never, then or later, put forward the true relation of the Law to the Gospel nor the real foundation of good works.[1692] He became involved in contradictions, and to the end of his days it became more and more apparent how forced had been the introduction into his theology of good works and the keeping of the Law.
Nicholas Amsdorf, Luther’s intimate friend and most docile pupil, published in 1559 a tract entitled “That the proposition ‘Good works are harmful to salvation’ is a good and Christian one preached both by St. Paul and by Luther.” Their “harmfulness” resided in their being regarded as meritorious for salvation. We may wonder what Luther would have thought of this writing had he been alive? In any case the Lutheran Formula of Concord of 1577 contains a mild protest against it: “The assertion that good works are necessary is not to be reprehended, seeing that it may be understood in a favourable sense”;[1693] it also appeals to what had been laid down in the Augsburg Confession; it could “not be gainsaid that, in both the Confession and the ‘Apologia,’ the words: ‘Good works are necessary,’ are frequently used.”[1694]
As for the attitude of the Augsburg Confession, it declares concerning works—a declaration for which Melanchthon’s cautious pen was solely responsible—“We also teach that such faith [in Christ, whereby man is justified] must produce good fruit and good works, and that we must perform all manner of good works which God has commanded, for God’s sake.”[1695]
No one was so much concerned as Melanchthon in insisting that the performance of good works should be represented as indispensable to the people, particularly from the pulpit. It vexed him, the more prudent of the two, to hear Luther again and again, and that often in hyperbolical and paradoxical form, laying such stress on faith alone. How far Melanchthon’s name may justifiably be quoted against what was undesirable in the olden Protestant teaching on works, should be clear from what has already been said concerning this theological henchman of Luther’s (cp. vol. iii., p. 347 ff.).
Luther’s admirers are wont to quote the following utterance of his when praising his attitude towards works: “Good, pious works never made a good, pious man, but a good, pious man performs good, pious works. Wicked works never made a wicked man, but wicked men perform wicked works.”[1696] That “wicked deeds never made a wicked man” he probably found some difficulty in really convincing many. If Luther meant that an unjust man or sinner, who is not cleansed by faith in Christ, can never act but wickedly, then it is the same error as we find in other passages and which is repeated in connection with the words just quoted: “Unless a man believes beforehand and is a Christian [’consecrated by faith’] all his works are of no account, but are vain, foolish, criminal and damnably sinful.” This is surely as much beside the mark as the above statement of Luther’s concerning the relation between a “pious man” and “pious works.” Of supernatural works that are meritorious for heaven what Luther adds is indeed correct: “Hence, in every instance the person must first be good and pious previous to all works, and the good works follow and proceed from a good and pious person.” We must, however, decline to accept Luther’s other inferences, viz. that the sinner is not in a position to perform natural good works of his own, and that the just man does not become more righteous through good works.
Hence Luther’s statement, however apparently ingenious, cannot remove the unfavourable impression produced by his doctrine of works. That it was highly valued by its author is plain from the number of times he repeats it under different forms. “Works do not make a Christian, but a Christian performs works,” so he exclaimed in a sermon in 1523, summing up in these specious words the instruction he had just given, viz. that the faithful must struggle to remove whatever of evil there is in them, and that they must “work good to their neighbour,” but not on any account try “to blot out sin by works, for this would be to shame and blaspheme God and Christ and to disgrace their own heritage,” viz. Justification by faith alone.[1697]