Luther, vol. 5 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

The interest deepens if we turn our attention to the demonological ideas Luther here brings into play. At that time he was suffering from the after-effects of his dreadful struggles with the “devil” (1527-28) and with his own conscience. That, here too, the devil might not be absent, he shows in the Preface how Satan had wrought all sorts of mischief amongst the Papists (this is Luther’s consolation) by neglect of the Visitations, and had set up nothing but “spiritual delusions and monk-calves.”[2277] The “idle, lazy bellies” had been forced to serve Satan. He gives this warning for the future: “The Devil has not grown good or devout this year, nor will he ever do so.” “Christ says in John viii. that the devil is a murderer.”[2278]

The words Luther uses when he characterises the intervention of the secular authorities in Church matters as merely a work of necessity or charity on the part of the chief member of the Church, are of psychological rather than of doctrinal importance.

What Luther says of the rights of the State authorities in Church affairs reveals how little his heart was in this abandonment of ecclesiastical authority to the secular arm. It shows the need he felt of concealing beneath fair words the road he had thus opened up to State-administration of the Church.[2279] The Saxon Elector is a “Christian member”; he is a “Christian brother” in the Church, who, as sovereign, must play his part; his intervention here appears as a service performed by the ruler towards the Christian community. “Our emergency Bishop,” such is the title Luther once bestows on Johann Frederick. The state of financial confusion amongst the Protestants is what chiefly demands, he says, that “His Electoral Highness, the embodiment of the secular authority, should look into and settle things.” On the other hand, it is not of his secular authority, but simply of his authority, that Luther speaks in the writing he addressed to the Elector on Nov. 22, 1526, where he appeals to him to make an end of the material and spiritual mischief by establishing “schools, pulpits and parsonages.” He says, “Now that all spiritual order and restraint have come to an end in the principality and all the monasteries and institutions have fallen into the hands of Your Electoral Highness as the supreme head, this brings with it the duty and labour of regulating this matter, which no one else either can or ought to undertake.” “God has in this case called and empowered Your Electoral Highness to do this.”[2280] The supervision of the doctrine as well as of the personal conduct of the ministers, and not merely the providing for their material wants, all come within the ordinary province of the “supreme head.”

Divergent Currents

The psychological significance of Luther’s hesitation to sanction the ruler’s supremacy in church government lies in its affording us a fresh insight into the various drifts of his mind and temperament.

On the one hand, he helped to raise State-ecclesiasticism into the saddle, and, on the other, he would fain see it off again and looks at it with the unfriendliest of eyes. He not only gives us to understand in the most unmistakable manner that it is not his ideal, but, up to the very last, he says things of it which ring almost like an anathema; nor does he forbear to heap reproaches on the natural consequences of an institution of which notwithstanding he himself was the father. Only error, with its ambiguity and want of logic, combined with an obstinate will, could issue in such contradictions.

His earlier and truer recognition of the independence of the spiritual power refused to be entirely extinguished. It was the same here as with Luther’s doctrine of faith alone, of justification and good works; again and again the old, wholesome views break out from under the crust of the new errors and, all involuntarily, find expression in quite excellent moral admonitions. So too his former orthodox views concerning the dignity of the Bible are at variance with the liberties he takes with the Word of God, and, even according to Protestant divines, lead him to an ambiguous theory and to a practice full of contradictions.[2281] Yet again, his call to make use of armed force against the Emperor is contrary to what he had taught for long years regarding the unlawfulness of such resistance; the disquiet and perturbation, the consciousness of this causes him he seeks to drown beneath ever louder battle cries.[2282] We find something similar throughout the whole field of his psychology: everywhere we can detect gainstriving currents.

In the questions bearing on the rights of the State and the Church, his temperament, which was so susceptible to sudden changes, needed only some strong impulse from without in order to bring to light one or other of these opposing trends. One powerful stimulus of the sort was afforded by the attractive outlook of bettering the frightful condition of the Lutheran congregations in Saxony, making his disputed cause victorious, and at the same time getting rid of the remaining Papists. By this alluring prospect he was taken captive. It would seem to have led him to shut his eyes to the iron fetters which State supremacy in Church matters would forge about his Church system not merely in Saxony but far beyond its borders. When, afterwards, he would willingly have retraced his steps, it was already too late. He was condemned to make statements extolling freedom in spiritual matters, the futility of which was plain to himself, and which, therefore, Protestants should not take so seriously as some of them do.

It is not sufficiently realised how such opposing tendencies run side by side from the very outset of his career.

Even in his “An den christlichen Adel,” in spite of the violence with which he incites the nobility against the Church’s administration we can see that he wishes to set his new allies more against the alleged “robberies and exactions” of the Church and the abuses which he supposed to be beyond remedy, than against the Church as such. It is true, that, by his universal priesthood, he breaks down the walls which mark the field of her sway; God can speak “through the mouth of any pious man against the Pope”; “in principle every Christian has the right to summon a Council”;[2283] but, should the secular powers gather together the Council he desired, they would, according to him, do so simply at the will and command of the Christian congregation which he also takes into account and which he admits possesses a certain spiritual “sword” which exists side by side with the secular sword, though only for the benefit of souls. Thus the spiritual power still exists as a dream. Only a Christian ruler, a “brother Christian, brother priest and sharer in the same spirit-world” may demand that violent reformation for which Luther yearns.[2284]—Thus, even in this stormy work, the two contrary drifts are to some extent discernible.