Luther, vol. 5 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

In dealing with these first three Commandments the booklet releases the reader at one stroke from all the Church’s laws hitherto observed. “Hence I allow each man to choose the day, the food and the amount of his fasting.”[322] “Where the spirit of Christ is, there all is free, for faith does not allow itself to be tied down to any work.”[323]

“The Christian who lives by faith has no need of any teacher’s good works.”[324] Here we can see the chief reason why Luther’s instructions on virtue and the spiritual life are so meagre.

A Lutheran Theologian on the Lack of any Teaching Concerning “Emancipation from the World”

Even from Protestant theologians we hear the admission that Luther’s Reformation failed to make sufficient allowance for the doctrine of piety; he neglected, so they urge, the question of man’s “emancipation from the world,” so that, even to the present day, Protestantism, and traditional Lutheran theology in particular, lacks any definite rule of piety. According to these critics, ever since Luther’s day practical and adequate instructions had been wanting with regard to what, subsequent to the reconciliation with the Father brought about by Justification, still remains “to be done in the Father’s house”; nor are we told how the life in Christ is to be led, of which nevertheless the Apostle Paul speaks so eloquently, though this is in reality the “main question in Christianity” and concerns the “vital interests of the Church.”

The remarks just quoted occur in an article by the theologian Julius Kaftan, Oberkonsistorialrat at Berlin, published in the “Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche” in 1908 under the title, “Why does the Evangelical Church know no doctrine of the Redemption in the narrower sense, and how may this want be remedied?” We all the more gladly append some further remarks by a theologian, who, as a rule, is by no means favourably disposed to Catholicism.

According to Kaftan, Luther indeed supplied “all the elements” for the upbuilding of a doctrine of “redemption from the world”; he gave “the stimulus” to the thought; it is “not as though we had no conception of it.”

But he, and the Reformation as a whole, failed to furnish any “actual, detailed doctrine” on this subject because their attack was directed, and had to be directed, against the ideal of piety as they found it in the Church’s monastic life; they destroyed it, so the author opines, because it was only under this distorted monkish shape that the “Christian idea of redemption from the world was then met.”[325] The Reformation omitted to replace it by a better system. It suffers from having fallen into the way of giving “too great prominence to the doctrine of Justification,” whereas the salvation “bestowed by Christ is not merely Justification and forgiveness of sins,” as the traditional Lutheran theology seems on the surface to assume even to-day, but rather the “everlasting possession” to be reached by a Christ-like life; Justification is but the road to this possession. Because people failed to keep this in view the doctrine of the real “work of salvation” has from the beginning been made far too little of.

A further reason which explains the neglect is, according to Kaftan, the following: In Catholicism it is the Church which acts as the guide to piety and supplies all the spiritual aids required; she acts as intermediary between God and the faithful. But “the Evangelical teaching rejected the Church (in this connection) as a supernatural agency for the dispensation of the means of salvation. In her place it set the action of the Spirit working by means of the Word of God.” Since this same teaching stops short at the Incarnation and Satisfaction of Christ, it has “no room for any doctrine of redemption (from the world) as a work of God.”[326] Pietism, with all its irregularities, was merely an outcome of this deficiency; but even the Pietists never succeeded in formulating such a doctrine of redemption.

It is to the credit of the author that he feels this want deeply and points out the way in which theology can remedy it.[327] He would fain see introduced a system of plain directions, though framed on lines different from those of the “ostensibly final doctrinal teaching” of the Formula of Concord,[328] i.e. instructions to the devout Christian how to manifest in his life in the world the death and resurrection of Christ which St. Paul experienced in himself. Much too much emphasis had been laid in Protestantism on Luther’s friendliness to the world and the joy of living, which he was the first to teach Christians in opposition to the doctrine of the Middle Ages; yet the other idea, of redemption from the world, must nevertheless retain a lasting significance in Christianity. Although, before Luther’s day, the Church had erroneously striven to attain to the latter solely in the monastic life, yet there is no doubt “that the most delicate blossoms of pre-Reformation piety sprang from this soil, and that the best forces in the Church owed their origin to this source.” Is it merely fortuitous, continues the author, “that the ‘Imitation of Christ,’ by Thomas à Kempis, should be so widely read throughout Christendom, even by Evangelicals? Are there not many Evangelical Christians who could witness that this book has been a great help to them in a crisis of their inner life? But whoever knows it knows what the idea of redemption from the world there signifies.” All this leads our author to the conclusion: “The history of Christianity and of the Church undoubtedly proves that here [in the case of the defect in the Lutheran theology he is instancing] it is really a question of a motive power and central thought of our religion.”[329] He points out to the world of our day, “that growing civilisation culminates in disgust with the world and with civilisation.” “Then,” he continues, “the soul again cries for God, for the God Who is above all the world and in Whom alone the heart finds rest. As it ever was, so is it still to-day.”[330]