Johann Agricola, the fickle and rebellious Wittenberg professor, seized on Luther’s denunciations of the Law, more particularly subsequent to the spring of 1537, and built them up into a fantastic Antinomian system, at the same time rounding on Luther, and even more on the cautious and reticent Melanchthon, for refusing to proceed along the road on which they had ventured. In support of his views he appealed to such sayings of Luther’s, as, the Law “was not made for the just,” and, was “a gallows only meant for thieves.”
He showed that, whereas Luther had formerly refused to recognise any repentance due to fear of the menaces of the Law, he had come to hold up the terrors of the Law before the eyes of sinners. As a matter of fact Luther did, at a later date, teach that justifying faith was preceded by a contrition produced by the Law; such repentance due to fear was excited by God Almighty in the man deprived of moral freedom, as in a “materia passiva.”—The following theses were issued as Agricola’s: “1. The Law [the Decalogue] does not deserve to be called the Word of God. 2. Even should you be a prostitute, a cuckold, an adulterer or any other kind of sinner, yet, so long as you believe, you are on the road to salvation. 3. If you are sunk in the depths of sin, if only you believe, you are really in a state of grace. 4. The Decalogue belongs to the petty sessions, not to the pulpit. 11. The words of Peter: ‘That by good works you may make sure your calling and election’ [2 Peter i. 10] are all rubbish. 12. So soon as you begin to fancy that Christianity requires this or that, or that people should be good, honest, moral, holy and chaste, you have already rent asunder the Gospel [Luke, ch. vi.].”[46]
In his counter theses Luther indignantly rejected such opinions: “the deduction is not valid,” he says, for instance, “when people make out, that what is not necessary for justification, either at the outset, later, or at the end, should not to be taught” (as obligatory), e.g. the keeping of the Law, personal co-operation and good works. “Even though the Law be useless to justification, still it does not follow that it is to be made away with, or not to be taught.”[47]
Luther was the more indignant at the open opposition manifest in his own neighbourhood and at the yet worse things that were being whispered, because he feared, that, owing to the friendly understanding between Agricola, Jacob Schenk and others, the new movement might extend abroad. The doctrine, in its excesses, seemed to him as compromising as the teaching of Carlstadt and the doings of the fanatics in former days. In reality it did embody a fanatical doctrine and an extremely dangerous pseudo-theology; in Antinomianism the pseudo-mystical ideas concerning freedom and inner experience which from the very beginning had brought Luther into conflict with the “Law,” culminated in a sort of up-to-date gnosticism.
We now find Luther, in the teeth of his previous statements, declaring that “Whoever makes away with the Law, makes away with the Gospel.”[48] He says: “Agricola perverts our doctrine, which is the solace of consciences, and seeks by its means to set up the freedom of the flesh”;[49] the grace preached by Agricola was really nothing more than immoral licence.[50]
The better to counter the new movement Luther at once proceeded to modify his teaching concerning the Law. In this wise Antinomianism exercised on him a restraining influence, and was to some extent of service to his doctrine and undertaking, warning him, as the fanatic movement had done previously, of certain rocks to be avoided.
Luther now came to praise Melanchthon’s view of the Law, which hitherto had not appealed to him, and declared in his Table-Talk: If the Law is done away with in the Church, that will spell the end of all knowledge of sin.[51]
This last utterance, dating from March, 1537, is the first to forebode the controversy about to commence, which was to cause Luther so much anxiety but which at the same time affords us so good an insight into his ethics and, no less, into his character. Even more noteworthy are the two sermons in which he expounds his standpoint as against that of Agricola, whom, however, he does not name.[52]
The first step taken by Luther at the University against the Antinomian movement was the Disputation of Dec. 18, 1537. For this he drew up a list of weighty theses. When the Disputation was announced everyone was aware that it was aimed at a member of the Wittenberg Professorial staff, at one, moreover, whom Luther himself, as dean, had authorised to deliver lectures on theology at Wittenberg. When Agricola failed even to put in an appearance at the Disputation, as though it in no way concerned him, and also continued to “agitate secretly” against the Wittenberg doctrine, Luther, in a letter addressed to Agricola on Jan. 6, 1538, withdrew from him his faculty to teach, and even demanded that he should forswear theology altogether (“a theologia in totum abstinere”); if he now wished to deliver lectures he would have to ask permission “of the University” (where Luther’s influence was paramount).[53] This was a severe blow for Agricola and his family. His wife called on Luther, dropped a humble curtsey and assured him that in future her husband would do whatever he was told. This seems to have mollified Luther. Agricola himself also plucked up courage to go to him, only to be informed that he would have to appear at the second Disputation on the subject—for which Luther had drawn up a fresh set of theses—and there make a public recantation. Driven into a corner, Agricola agreed to these terms. At the second Disputation (Jan. 12, 1538) he did, as a matter of fact, give explanations deemed satisfactory by Luther, by whom he was rewarded with an assurance of confidence. He was, nevertheless, excluded from all academical office, and though the Elector of Saxony permitted him to act as preacher this sanction was not extended by Bugenhagen to any preaching at Wittenberg.[54] A third and fourth set of theses drawn up by Luther,[55] who could not do enough against the new heresy, date from the interval previous to the settlement, though no Disputation was held on them that the peace might not be broken.