Luther, vol. 5 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

With the same desire to retain intact some sort of spiritual order distinct from the secular, Luther here and elsewhere seeks to reserve to the Christian congregation the right of choosing their pastors; circumstances were, however, to prove too strong for him.

“Throughout Christendom things should be so ordered that every town chooses from amongst its congregation a learned and pious burgher, commits to him the office of pastor and sees that he is given enough for his upkeep.”[2285] The congregation is also to have the right to depose him should his preaching not turn out in accordance with the Word of God. What Luther has in mind is united action on the part of all the true believers. But here, again, he has perforce to lean rather on the authorities. For, in the congregation, we have first of all the Town-Council, which, even when only a minority of the burghers is in favour of the religious reform, receives from Luther a power which does not belong to it, viz. of seeing that the people it rules are supplied with the right preachers. Above the Council, moreover, stands the supreme authority, viz. the sovereign. The latter must naturally assist the Council in choosing good Evangelical preachers and must himself take steps when dissensions cause the Council to refuse to move. Luther, again, will do nothing in opposition to the Court; for instance, he will not allow any pastor to enter upon his office who is not a “persona grata” at the Court, even though he should have been duly called by the congregation.[2286] Every parish is indeed independent by divine right, but the prince also acts by divine right when, as protector and defender, he intervenes, regardless of the traditional rights of patron and warden, etc.[2287]

In Saxony, where the ruler was favourable to Lutheranism, his authority was indispensable for the establishment of the Church. On the other hand, where the conditions were less favourable to Luther, there, according to his “De instituendis ministris,” the principal work must devolve on the town councillors and the patrons as well as on the preachers appointed by them to the congregations;[2288] to these it falls to elect bishops, so that everything may be put on independent ecclesiastical lines.—Thus Luther was not so averse to changing both methods and principles.

The change in Luther’s views comes out most clearly in the leave he gives to the highest secular power to annul the choice made by the congregation. The instructions for the Visitation prescribed that, on the bare authority of the prince and regardless of the rights of the congregation, those pastors who taught what was erroneous or who had proved otherwise unsatisfactory were to be deposed and replaced by others. This held even of those who were strongly backed by their congregation. “In point of fact,” says Carl Müller, “this was practically to shift the responsibility from the congregation and its authorities to the sovereign. It is also clear, that, where there was a divergency of opinion concerning the orthodoxy of a preacher, the sovereign naturally had his own way.”[2289] But, even before this, Luther had refused to sanction the demand of the Erfurt burghers, viz. that the parishes should themselves appoint their pastors even against the wishes of the Town-Council; it was “seditious,” so he wrote in 1525, “that the parishes should seek to choose or dismiss their pastors regardless of the Council.”[2290] Here the Council happened to be on his side; where this was not the case, Luther was just as ready to set aside its rights in favour of those of the ruler.

In this wise the right of the congregation to elect its pastor, a right which he had once praised so highly, even in his own day was so whittled away as to become quite meaningless. Of the two tendencies which had been apparent in him from the first, one inclining towards the authorities and the other towards freedom of election, the former had won the day.

We already know that Luther inclined for a long while to the establishment of a Church-Apart or assembly of true believers. Yet, at the same time, he was working for a National Church, albeit he was convinced that such a Church would for the most part be composed of non-Christians. Eventually the latter was to hold the field owing to the force of outward circumstances.[2291]

He was in favour of a Church which should be entirely free, and at the same time of a confessional Church with binding dogmas. So strongly did he stand for freedom in all ecclesiastical matters that he not only refused to recognise the existence of any spiritual “authority” among his followers, but also declared no Pope, no angel, no man had the power to rob the faithful of this freedom or to impose anything on him.[2292] At the same time, however, he was in favour of that strict disciplinary government which finds its expression in the regulations for the Visitation.

According to Luther there is no real Canon Law. He refuses to recognise State and Church as two bodies which exist side by side.[2293] And yet he complains of the way in which the rights of the Church, i.e. of his Church, were being thwarted by the lawyers.[2294]

He wished a distinction to be drawn between the Prince and the Christian, and declared: “His princely authority has nothing to do with his Christianity”; and yet he himself united the spiritual and the secular power in the prince’s hands so closely that they were never afterwards to be wrenched apart. As Carl Müller truly remarks, we must not “press too much the term ‘emergency bishop for the time being’ which Luther applies to the secular ruler.”[2295]