Conscience in the Religious Question of the Day
The new method of dealing with conscience is more closely connected with Luther’s new method of inducing faith than might at first sight appear.
The individualism he proclaimed in matters of faith embodied the principle, that “each one must, in his own way, lay hold on religious experience and thus attain religious conviction.”[261] Luther often says, in his idealistic way, that only thus is it possible to arrive at the supreme goal, viz. to feel one’s faith within as a kind of inspiration; our aim must ever be to feel it “surely and immutably” in our conscience and in all the powers of our soul.[262] Everything must depend on this experience, the more so as to him faith means something very different from what it means to Catholics; it is, he says, “no taking it all for true”; “for that would not be Christian faith but more an opinion than faith”; on the contrary, each one must believe that “he is one of those on whom such grace and mercy is bestowed.”[263] Now, such a faith, no matter how profound and immutable the feeling be, cannot be reached except at the cost of a certain violence to conscience; such coercion is, in fact, essential owing to the nature of this faith in personal salvation.
What, according to Luther, is the general character of faith? Fear and struggles, so he teaches, are not merely its usual accompaniments, but are also the “sure sign that the Word has touched and moved you, that it exercises, urges and compels you”; nay, Confession and Communion are really meant only for such troubled ones, “otherwise there would be no need of them”—i.e. they would not be necessary unless there existed despair of conscience and anxiety concerning faith. It was a mistaken practice, he continues, for many to refrain from receiving the Sacrament, “preferring to wait until they feel the faith within their heart”; in this way all desire to receive is extinguished; people should rather approach even when they feel not at all their faith; then “you will feel more and more attracted towards it”[264]—though this again, according to Luther, is by no means quite certain.
The “inward experience of faith” too often becomes simply the dictate of one’s whim. But a whim and order to oneself to think this or that does not constitute faith as the word is used in revelation, nor does a command imposed on the inward sense of right and wrong amount to a pronouncement of conscience.
Though Luther often held up himself and his temptations regarding faith, as an example which might comfort waverers, Protestants have nevertheless praised him for the supposed firmness of his faith and for his joy of conscience. But was not his “defiant faith” really identical with that imposition he was wont to practise on his conscience and to dignify by the name of inspiration?
Yet, in spite of all, he never found a secure foundation. “I know what it costs me, for I have daily to struggle with myself,” he told his friends in 1538.[265] “I was scarcely able to bring myself to believe,” he said in a sermon of the same year, “that the doctrine of the Pope and the Fathers was all wrong.”[266] His faith was as insecurely fixed, so he quaintly bewailed on another occasion, “as the fur trimming on his sleeve.”[267] “Who believes such things?” he asks, wildly implicating all people in general, at the conclusion of a note jotted down in a Bible and alluding to the hope of life everlasting.[268] In 1529 he repeatedly describes to his friends how Satan tempts him (“Satanas fatigat”) with lack of faith and despair, how he was sunk in unspeakable “bitterness of soul,” and, how, for this reason as he once says, he was scarce able “with a trembling hand” to write to them.[269]
Calvin, too, was aware of the frequent terrors Luther endured. When Pighius, the Catholic writer, alleged Luther’s struggles of conscience and temptations concerning the faith as disproving his authority, Calvin took good care not to deny them. He boldly replied that this only redounded to Luther’s honour since it was the experience of all devout people, and particularly of the most famous divines.[270]
Was it possible, according to Luther, to be conscientiously opposed to his teaching on faith and morals? At least in theory, he does go so far in certain statements as to recognise the possibility of such conscientious scruples. In these utterances he would even appear to surrender the whole weight and authority of his theological and ethical discoveries, fundamental though they were to his innovations. “I have served the Church zealously with what God has given me and what I owe to Him. Whoever does not care for it, let him read or listen to others. It matters but little should they feel no need of me.”[271] With regard to public worship, it is left “to each one to make up his conscience as to how he shall use his freedom.” “I am not your preacher,” so he wrote to the “Strasburg Christians,” who were inclined to distrust his exclusiveness; “no one is bound to believe me; let each man look to himself”;[272] all are to be referred “from Luther,” “to Christ.”[273]
Such statements, however, cannot stand against his constant insistence on his Divine mission; they are rather of psychological interest as showing how suddenly he passes from one idea to another. Moreover, his statement last mentioned, often instanced by Protestants as testifying to his breadth of mind, is nullified almost on the same page by the solemn assurance, that, his “Gospel is the true Gospel” and that everything that contradicts it is “heresy,” for, indeed, as had been foretold by the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. xi. 19), “heresies” must needs arise.[274]