On one occasion Luther points out, that in the past, the Pope of Rome had been all in all. Now it is the sovereign of the land, who, as God’s own Vicar, is all in all.
Thus we have here, writes Frank Ward in his “Darstellung der Ansichten Luthers vom Staat,” “almost the counterpart of the old ecclesiastical absolutism, seeing that all ecclesiastical functions and conditions so far as they belong to the outward domain are put under the State.”[2240] Instead of its being “almost the counterpart,” it would be better to say that it was an absolute caricature of the supposed ecclesiastical absolutism of the past. Ward, however, goes on to say that in the chapter in question he had only shown how, “Luther gave the State an independent dignity and position, and how he had enlarged and strengthened its claims.”
In direct contrast to those writers who see in Luther’s political theory the foundation of the modern State, is a recent statement of Heinrich Boehmer’s.
“Luther’s political and social views,” says this author,[2241] “are in every essential point quite mediæval, antiquated and unmodern. People speak of ‘Luther’s views’ or even of ‘Luther’s teaching on the State and society.’ But it would be better to refrain from using such terms which can only serve to arouse false expectations. As little as the reformer was familiar with the words state and society, so little did he know their meaning. For no State or society in the modern sense of the word existed at the time in central or northern Germany, but merely a large number of bodies somewhat resembling States, all of which, however, fell far short of the ideal of a State.” He goes on to explain, that, for this reason, Luther always speaks to the “authorities,” they being in his eyes the most potent factor in the political organisations he knew; yet, in determining their duties, “his mind moves on quite mediæval lines”; “in the matter of political theory he is far behind even Thomas of Aquin, for Thomas had, in the Italian cities, an example of a far more highly developed State, whilst in the school of Aristotle he had made acquaintance with a number of political ideas and views which had led him to a very thorough study of politics.” Boehmer points out that, according to Luther, the Natural Law upbears the outward order with which alone he was conversant—viz. the landed-aristocratic society which predominated at the time of the reformation—until it came to appear as almost a divine institution, any attempt to overthrow which amounted to a crime, “a view which indeed explains much of the success of Lutheranism, but which is anything but modern.”[2242]
Luther’s “Patriarchal theory,” according to H. Boehmer, had an even greater influence on the political conditions of Lutheran countries than his other theory of the rights of the nobility. The princes within the domain of the new church system entered eagerly into the theory of their supposed paternal rights and finally built it out into a quite insufferable absolutism. Such an undue growth of the secular power was the more to be feared seeing that any independent spiritual power, which might, as in the Middle Ages, have served as a counterweight, no longer existed, having been swallowed up in the authority of the prince. Everything had indeed been secularised, and, to the Lutheran ruler, as God’s own representative, it now was left to direct the religious and temporal concerns of the population on the lines laid down in the Bible.
“The Lutheran prince,” says Boehmer, “as father of the country, undertook to provide for his subjects in every department of life; his rule was absolute, though indeed patriarchal, an ideal of the State quite in accordance with Luther’s views.”[2243]
“Any separation or division of Church and State Luther neither recognised nor desired,” now that he had invested the Evangelical princes with the supreme episcopate.[2244]
The term “Zwangskultur,” often used of the absolutism obtaining in the Lutheran order of society, is not altogether incorrect, in spite of the protests of Protestant theologians. Other Protestant authors find a parallel between Luther’s view of the State and certain late mediæval ones; both, according to them, have been influenced by humanism, with its Cæsarean conception of unfreedom, and by theocratic absolutism.
Carl Sell notes how the Reformation, “in its own way, put new life into the mediæval idea of a new theocracy.” “How deeply the theocratical idea was rooted in the Protestant State-system may be seen from the time it took before the States would consent to surrender their religious character.”[2245]
After the Reformation, says G. Steinhausen, “the theological spirit more than ever laid hold of the world and mankind and fettered the ardent longing for freedom. Herein lies the chief harm wrought by the Reformation.”[2246]