Secondly, he dismisses in silence the so-called actual grace. Not even in answering the question as to the source whence the believer draws strength and ability to strive after what is good, does he refer to it, so hostile is his whole system to any co-operation between the natural and the supernatural in man.
Thirdly, he does not give its due to man’s freedom in co-operating in the doing of what is good; it is true he does not expressly deny it, but it was his usual practice in his addresses to the people to say as little as possible of his doctrine of the enslaved will.[131] Along with faith, however, he extols the Holy Ghost. “Leave it to the Holy Ghost!” Indeed faith itself, and the strong feeling which should accompany it, are exclusively the work of the Holy Ghost. It is the Holy Ghost alone Who believes, and feels, and works in man, according to Luther’s teaching elsewhere. This action of God alone is something different from actual grace. In the instructions he gave to Melanchthon in 1536 concerning justification and works,[132] Luther entirely ignores any action on man’s part as a free agent, and yet here we have the “clearest expression” of his doctrine of how good works follow on justification. The Protestant author of “Luthers Theologie in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung” remarks of this work (and the same applies to the above sermons and other statements): “Luther is always desirous, on the one hand of depreciating man’s claim to personal worth and merit, and on the other by his testimony to God’s mercy in Christ, of furthering faith and the impulses and desires which spring from faith and the spirit; here, too, he says nothing of any choice as open to man between the Divine impulses working within him and those of his sinful nature.”[133]
Fourthly, and most important of all, Luther says nothing of the true significance of morality for the attainment of everlasting life.
The best and theologically most convincing reply to the objection of which he spoke: “Well and good, then I shall sin lustily,” etc. would have been: No, a good moral life is essential for salvation! The strongest Bible texts would have been there to back such a statement, and, to his powerful eloquence, it should have proved an attractive task to crush his frivolous opponents by so weighty an argument. Yet we find never a word concerning the necessity of good works for salvation, but merely an account of the wonders worked by faith of its own accord alone after it has laid hold on the heart. This is readily understood, if justification is purely passive and effected solely by the Spirit of God which enkindles faith and, with it, covers over sin as with a shield, then the very being of the life of faith must be mere passivity, and there can be no more question of attaining to salvation by means of good deeds performed with the aid of grace. In the instruction for Melanchthon mentioned above we find at the end this clear query: “Is this saying true: Righteousness by works is necessary for salvation?” Luther answers by a distinction: “Not as if works operate or bring about salvation,” he says, “but rather they are present together with the faith that operates righteousness; just as of necessity I must be present in order to be saved.” This distinction, however, leaves the question just where it was before. He concludes his remarks on this vital matter with a jest on the purely external and fortuitous presence of works in the man received into eternal life: “I too shall be in at the death, said the rascal when he was about to be hanged and many people were hurrying to see the scene.”[134]
All the more strongly did Luther in his usual way describe in his last sermon the natural sinfulness which persists in man owing to original sin.
The sin that still dwells within us “forces” man to prevent faith and works coming to their own.[135] For “he is not yet without sin, though he has the forgiveness of sins and is sanctified by the Holy Ghost.” In consequence of the “foulness” within him “the longer he lives the worse he gets.” “We cannot get rid of our sinful body.”[136] For this reason even the “best minds” so often are indifferent to eternal life. On account of the evil taint in our flesh we are unable to rise as high as we ought.[137] But if original sin and its workings were declared really sinful in man (for even the very motions against “heartfelt pleasure” in God’s service are, so we are told, “sins”[138]), then it is no wonder that Luther should have been confronted with the question of which he speaks: “If sin be in me, how then can I be pleasing to God?”—a question which formerly could not have been asked of those whose original sin had been washed away in baptism. The teaching of the olden Church had been, that original sin was blotted out by baptism, but that the inclination to evil persisted in man to his last breath, though without any fault on his part so long as consent was lacking.[139]
Still less to be wondered at was it, that many, unable to regard themselves as responsible or guilty on account of the involuntary motions of original sin, began to doubt whether any responsibility existed for evil actions or whether moral effort was within the bounds of possibility.
Further, according to Luther, our constant exercise of ourselves in faith and our “rubbing” ourselves against sin was finally to lead “not merely to our sins being forgiven but to their being altogether rooted up and swept away; for your shabby, smelly body could not enter heaven without first being cleansed and beautified.”[140] Taking for granted his mystic assumption that sinful concupiscence can at last be “swept away,” he insists on our continuing hopefully “to amend by faith and prayer our weakness and to fight against it until such a change takes place in our sinful body that sin no longer exists therein,”[141] though, in his opinion, this cannot entirely be until we reach heaven. Yet experience, had he but opened his eyes to it, here once again contradicted him. The “fomes peccati,” as the Catholic Church rightly teaches, cannot be extinguished so long as man is on this earth, though it may be damped, and, by the practice of what is right and the use of the means of grace, be rendered harmless to our moral life. The Church expected nothing unreasonable from man, though her moral standards were of the highest. Luther, however, by abandoning the Church’s ethics, came to teach a strange mixture of perverted, unworkable idealism and all too great indulgence towards human frailty.