Luther, vol. 5 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

Among the olden doctrines thrown over by Luther his Protestant critics rightly instance the Canon of Scripture and the right of the Church to interpret the Bible. They corroborate strikingly from Luther’s writings the results which we reached above,[1715] a circumstance which may surprise Protestant readers.

If, according to Luther, the doctrine of the oldest confessions of faith are only to be retained because they can be directly proved from the Bible, then the Bible itself with all its books, so such Protestants argue, must stand firm and inviolable. Now, awkwardly enough, Luther himself saps the authority of the Canon.

“If the attitude is justified which Luther takes up in his famous Prefaces to the various books of the New Testament,” says Harnack (cp. prefaces to the Epistle of James, to the Epistle to the Hebrews and to the Apocalypse), “then an end is made of the infallible Canon of Scripture. It is here of the utmost importance historically, though in itself a matter of indifference, that we find Luther, especially after the controversy on the Supper, making statements to the effect that every letter of Scripture is fundamental to the Christian faith; the flagrant contradiction involved in the assertion that a thing holds and at the same time does not hold can only be solved by saying that it does not. The same follows from Luther’s views on faith, for, according to him, this is produced by the Holy Ghost through the preaching of the Word of God. To-day too, all Protestants are agreed that historical criticism of Scripture is not unevangelical, though this unanimity of opinion extends only as far as the ‘principle,’ and many refuse to carry it out in practice.”[1716]—“Luther, at the very time when he was waging so brave a war against the authority of the Councils, also opposed Scriptural infallibility, and, indeed, how could he do otherwise?... There can be no doubt that Luther’s attitude towards the New Testament, as we find it set forth in the Prefaces and in one or two other passages, is the correct one, i.e. that which really tallies with his belief.”[1717]

As F. Loofs points out, Luther leaves us without any outward guarantee for the authority of the Canon of the Bible.[1718] Loofs quotes, for instance, Luther’s saying: “Hence God must tell you within your heart: This is God’s Word.”[1719] “Luther’s criticism,” the same writer says, “did not spare even those books which he allowed to be truly prophetic or apostolic.... He frankly admitted the human element in Scripture.”[1720]

If Luther’s fundamental opposition to the faith once delivered is already apparent from his criticism of the Bible, still more is this the case when we come to look into the freedom he allowed in the interpretation of the sense of the Bible.

As Harnack puts it: In Luther’s view “the Church is based on something which every Christian, no matter how humble, can see and test, viz. on the Word of God as apprehended by pure reason. This, of course, was tantamount to a claim to ascertain the true verbal sense of Holy Scripture.... But Luther never foresaw how far this rule would lead.”[1721]

Luther himself often put his principle to such arbitrary usage as to prove a warning to others (above, vol. iv., pp. 406 f., 418 f.), and to exclude the possibility of any settled dogma. “The flagrant contradiction,” says Harnack, “into which he was led by criticising the Bible whilst all the time holding the idea he did about its inspiration, he contrived to explain away by reading the Evangel itself into texts which presented a difficulty.”[1722] “In Holy Scripture, the infallible authority, only that was to be found, which on other grounds was already established as the true doctrine.”[1723]

Hence in the matter of the Bible, so Harnack has it, “Criticism, in order to be according to Luther’s mind, would have to go against him in the interests of faith.”[1724]

Luther’s abandonment of the Church’s standpoint with regard to the Bible is closely bound up with his renunciation of the Church’s teaching office, of the hierarchy and of all respect for tradition. This meant, as modern Protestant critics admit, the destruction of the whole theory of tradition and, in fact, of all ecclesiastical authority, though, on Harnack’s own admission, ancient Church writers, especially “subsequent to Irenæus,” rely much on such authority.