Harnack and those who think like him are even more antagonistic to the later creeds of Lutheranism than to the Confession composed by Melanchthon. “The ‘symbolic age’ when the ‘Lutheran Church’ gave ‘definite expression’ to her will is nothing more than a fable convenue. ‘This Lutheran Church as an actual body,’ says Carl Müller, ‘never really existed and the spokesmen of the strictest Luther faction were just the worst enemies of such a union.... Thus to speak of creeds of the Lutheran Church involves an historic impossibility.’”[1712] According to these theologians Protestantism must hark back to Luther’s original principles of freedom. Moreover, argues Harnack, Protestantism has on the whole already reverted to this earlier standpoint. “We are not forsaking the clear testimony of history when we find in Luther’s Christianity and in the first beginnings of the Reformation all that present-day Protestantism has developed, though amidst weakness and constraint; nor when we state that Luther’s idea of faith is still to-day the moving spirit of Protestantism, however many or however few may have made it their own.”[1713] Luther’s “most effective propositions,” according to him, may well be allowed to stand as the “heirloom of the Evangelical Churches”; it is plain that they do not lead to a mere “dogmatic Christianity,” but to true Christianity consisting in the “disposition which the Father of Jesus Christ awakens in the heart through the Gospel.” Luther himself has only to be rightly appreciated and “allowed to remain Luther.”[1714]
Harnack repeatedly insists that Luther by setting aside all authority on dogma, whether of the Church, the hierarchy or tradition, also destroyed the binding character of any “doctrine.” By his attack on all authority he dealt a mortal blow at the vital principle of the ancient Church, traceable back to the second century. According to him “every doctrinal formulary of the past required objective proof”; this objective proof was to him the sole authority. “How then could there be authority when the objective proof failed or seemed to demonstrate the contrary?” To judge of the proof is within the province of each individual, and, according as he is constituted, the result will be different. “Luther—even at the most critical moment, when he seemed to stand in the greatest need of the formal authority of the letter—did not allow himself to be overawed or his mouth to be closed even by the Apostles’ Creed.” He indeed “involved himself later in limitations and restrictions,” “but there can be no doubt ... that by his previous historic behaviour towards them he had undermined all the formal authorities of Catholicism.”[1715]
On this fundamental question of the possibility of a “regula fidei” in Luther’s case, we may listen to the opinion of another esteemed Protestant historian of late years.
Friedrich Paulsen, in his much-prized “Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts,” writes: “The Word of God does not suffice as a ‘regula fidei,’ but a personal authority is also needed to decide on questions of doctrine, this is what the Luther of 1535 says and thereby confutes the Luther of 1521, who refused to allow anyone on earth to point out to him the faith unless he himself could gather its truth from the Word of God. Had Luther abided by his rejection of all human authority he should have declared: On the interpretation of Scripture there is no final court of appeal, each one believes or errs at his own peril.... What Luther had relied on in 1521 against the Papists, viz. inability to refute him from Scripture, was used against him in his own struggle with the ‘fanatics.’... For the confuting of heretics a rule of faith is needed, and what is more, a living one to decide in each case. The principle of 1521, to allow no authority on earth to prescribe the faith, is anarchical. On these lines there can be no ‘Church’ with an ‘examen doctrinæ’ of its candidates and Visitations of the clergy. This the Reformers also saw and thus there was nothing left for them, if they were to retain a ‘Church,’ than to set up their own authority in the stead of the authority of Pope and Councils. On one vexatious point they were, however, at a loss: Against the later Luther it was always possible to appeal to the Luther of Worms. The starting-point and raison d’être of the whole Reformation was the repudiation on principle of all human authority in matters of faith; after this, to find Luther installed as Pope, was scarcely pleasing. If anyone stands in need of a Pope he would surely be better advised in sticking to the real one at Rome.... The hole in Luther’s teaching still remains a hole in the principle of the Protestant Church to-day: There can be no earthly authority in matters of faith, and: Such an authority there must be, this is an antinomy which lies at its very root. Nor is the antinomy accidental, but lies in the very nature of the matter and is expressed as often as we speak of the ‘Protestant Church.’ If there is to be a Church ... then the individual must submit himself and his ‘faith’ to the ‘faith’ of the community.” Paulsen, who had spoken of “Luther as Pope,” refers to Luther’s own remark when taking his seat with Bugenhagen in the carriage in which he went to meet Vergerio the Papal Nuncio: “Here go the German Pope and Cardinal Pomeranus, God’s chosen instruments”; Luther’s remark was of course spoken in jest, but the jest “was only possible against a background of bitter earnest”; Luther frequently dallied with this idea; “for the position Luther occupied, ages even after his death, there really was no other comparison to be found.... With the above jest Luther reduced himself ad absurdum.”[1716]—Such censures are in reality more in place than those eulogies of Luther’s exclamation at Worms in 1521 on the freedom of Bible conviction, into which orthodox Protestant biographers of Luther sometimes lapse.
Some Peculiarities of the New Doctrine on the Sacraments, Particularly on Baptism.
The theological pillars of the edifice of public worship are the seven sacraments, the visible signs ordained by Christ by which grace is given to our souls. Held in honour even by the Nestorians and Monophysites as witnesses to ecclesiastical antiquity, they enfold and hallow all the chief events of human life. Luther debased the effect of the sacraments by making it something wholly subjective, produced by the recipients themselves in virtue of the faith infused into them by God, whereas the Church has ever recognised the sacraments as sublime and mysterious signs, which of themselves work in the receiver (“ex opere operato”) according to the extent of his preparation, Christ having made the grace promised dependent on the outward signs instituted by Himself. Luther, on the other hand, by declaring the sacraments mere symbols whereby faith is strengthened, operative only by virtue of the recipient’s faith in the pardon and forgiveness of his sins, reduced them to the status of empty pledges for soothing and consoling consciences. Only later did he again come nearer to the Catholic doctrine of the “opus operatum.” With his view, however, that the sole object of the sacraments is to increase the “fides specialis,” we arrive again at the point which for Luther is the sum total of religion, viz.: “mere forgiveness.”
He was not at all conscious of the contradiction involved in his vigorous insistence on the absolute necessity of the sacraments for salvation. From his standpoint Carlstadt was far more logical when he said: “If Christ [alone] is peace and assurance [of salvation], then lifeless creatures [the sacramental, outward signs] can surely not satisfy or make secure.”[1717]
Luther raised no objection to infant baptism. He also wished it, and baptism in general, to be given in the usual way in the name of the Trinity. But how did he try to solve the difficulty arising from his theory of the sacraments: If the sacrament only works in virtue of the faith of the receiver and the effect is merely an increase of faith, of what advantage can it be to the infant who is incapable of belief? He endeavoured to remedy the defect with the help of the faith of the congregation.
Meeting difficulties on this line he did not shrink from claiming a perpetually recurring miracle, and proposed to assume that, during the act of baptism, the new-born infant was momentarily endowed by God with the use of reason and filled with faith.