Of the three comprehensive and most widely known biographies of Luther, that of Hausrath depicts Luther from the standpoint of a liberal divine. Here Luther almost ceases to be a theologian, or at any rate the theological problems amidst which Luther lived are scarcely even mentioned. On the other hand, in the biography by Theodore Kolde of Erlangen (2nd ed., 1893), the Wittenberg professor again figures as a teacher; his scholarly two-volume work is positive in tendency and regards Luther as a preacher of truth against the darkness of the Middle Ages—which, however, the author has misunderstood and fails to treat fairly. The third large modern work on Luther, also in two volumes, is by the late Julius Köstlin of Halle and Breslau; a new edition was published in 1903 with the collaboration of G. Kawerau; here the picture of Luther is a product of the so-called theology of compromise.[1637]
Wilhelm Maurenbrecher, professor of History at Bonn and Leipzig, said truly in his “Studien” (1874), that the traditional Luther “myth” the “stuff and rubbish” which the past had looked upon as true history, deserved to be cleared away. He traces back to Sleidanus the “current ‘fable convenue’” about Luther; this writer, in the work he published in 1555, which became a classic, had begun the process of “moderating and toning down the theological colours” of Luther’s picture, in such a way as to make Luther the living expression of the “already finished programme of the Protestant princes and theologians.” He lifted the author of the religious upheaval “out of his democratic, revolutionary setting” and stamped him as a “model” for theologians. Maurenbrecher, as a layman, is very frank in his opinion as to the central question of Bible-interpretation: “It is undoubtedly the right of every man at the present day to appeal to Luther’s own example, in favour of the unfettered freedom of Bible-research.”[1638]
By an objective portrayal of his characteristics, Protestant non-theologians such as Maurenbrecher have done good service, particularly as regards the more secular side of Luther’s picture. The historian Onno Klopp was still a Protestant when, in 1857, in his “Katholizismus, Protestantismus und Gewissensfreiheit in Deutschland,” albeit recognising Luther’s merits, he censured his “boundless confidence in the infallibility of his own judgment”; the “unstable character of the new Church, so dependent on the favour of princes”; also the blind, idolatrous veneration of his followers for him, especially the attitude of the “narrow-minded Elector and his advisers who were ready to take all the morbid drivel of a quarrelsome old man for the Word of God.” And these same authorities, so Onno Klopp declares, set up a new “Protestant Cæsarean Popedom” which year by year became more burdensome and oppressive.[1639] On the whole his portrait of Luther is the reverse of flattering.
Had the writings of Leopold von Ranke and Carl Adolf Menzel been as independent as Maurenbrecher’s or as broad-minded as Klopp’s, their picture of Luther would have been more true. Even to-day, in spite of the abundance of works on the Reformation period, an independent historian at home in all the profound and detailed studies which have recently appeared, is still lacking in Protestant circles; hence a living picture of Luther’s person has not yet been painted.
As for the Protestant theologians they have, as a rule, not contributed much to the portrait of Luther; what they have given us has been rather a sort of kaleidoscope of Luther’s dogma; they busy themselves more with crumbs from his history than with it as a whole. Dealing with some particular doctrine, writing or action of his they have sketched, so to speak, only one facet of his personality; with the help of this they have, nevertheless, built up a picture of the founder of Protestantism as he seemed to them. Hence even the fundamental conception of Luther’s message, i.e. that whereby it differs essentially from Catholicism has been very variously estimated.[1640]
Protestant theologians of more “positive” leanings have protested against the Rationalist views of those other theologians who hold that Luther banished dogma from his Christianity, and rediscovered Christianity “as a religion.”[1641] They declare that, not only did he not abrogate dogma but that he actually “revived and preserved” it. A religion without dogma was unthinkable to him.[1642]
It is true that these positive theologians who believe in the existence of Lutheran “dogmas” are at variance when it comes to stating clearly the actual dogmas which Luther “revived,” or in what his essential message consisted. Some insist above all on the ethical side; thanks to Luther there came a “deeper understanding for the idiosyncracies of the individual” than was the rule in mediæval Christianity.
Where such inveterate differences of opinion prevailed even the theology of conciliation was bound to fail. Reinhold Seeberg, the Berlin theologian, tried to promote some sort of settlement in his “Grundwahrheiten der christlichen Religion,” a work “framed on the lines of the olden Gospel and in the spirit of Paul and Luther which seeks to make the Christian standpoint understood in wider circles.” But his scheme met with a poor reception; the more orthodox looked at it “askance, and, on the other hand, the progressive party were only the more confirmed in their antagonism.”[1643]