Several Protestant theologians of late years have compared Luther to St. Paul. This, for instance, was also done by Walter Köhler of Zürich, a liberal theologian, who does not hesitate to reprehend in Luther whatever he finds amiss, and who also shows considerably more broad-mindedness than many others in his appreciation of the works of Catholics.
The Janus-Picture of the Mediæval and Modern Luther
Thanks to Denifle’s work Luther’s relation to the Middle Ages is now more clearly seen. The need for bestowing more attention than has hitherto been done on that side of Luther’s picture which belongs to the Middle Ages has been strongly insisted on by another liberal theologian, viz. Ernst Troeltsch of Heidelberg. In Troeltsch’s writings Luther’s features become to a great extent mediæval. His views on grace and faith, his ethics, his Churches, the stress he lays on the Word—all this, in reality, is an echo of Catholic times. All that forms the very being of Luther is mediæval and the Protestant traits are merely the wrapping.[1644] With the belief in revelation, which he still retained, he had been unable to rise above the hedge of the mediæval way of thought.
Troeltsch thus comes to the conclusion that the new era in which we live did not commence with Luther but only some two centuries ago, i.e. with the dawn of the Enlightenment. The older Protestantism, no less than Luther himself, belongs to the Middle Ages. Luther stuck fast in the Middle Ages chiefly because he clung to the belief in the “supranatural,” whereas the modern world, thanks to a mathematico-mechanical natural science, has done away with all that stands above nature.
Troeltsch also points out that Luther traces his conception of the Evangel back to Paul, and not to Jesus as the New Theology does; also that he, like the earlier Protestantism, had not completely shaken himself free of the mediæval asceticism, and that he held fast to the traditional doctrine of an original sin.
A Catholic writer has expressed himself more correctly on Luther’s false “supranaturalism,” according to which God does everything and man nothing: “The innermost kernel of his doctrinal system was more ultra-mediæval than the Middle Ages themselves.” “So far was he from desiring to make religion less unworldly or less Christian, that, according to what he was incessantly hammering into his hearers, man was to live himself ever more and more into conscience and faith, into Christ and the Gospel.”[1645]
Nevertheless the objection brought forward repeatedly of recent years against the theory of Luther’s mediævalism is also worthy of note; it is urged that, particularly in the early years of his tempestuous struggle, he threw off ideas which stamp him as thoroughly modern.
F. Loofs, for instance, says: “His leading ideas include in them a whole series of inferences which, however, he never followed up to their logical conclusion.… I may mention Luther’s dislike for all bare historical and dogmatic belief, the tendency he had caught from Erasmus to criticise even the Canon, the distinction he adumbrated between the message of salvation or ‘Word of God’ and the actual written word of Scripture.… Semler, who has been styled the father of Rationalism, in his ‘Abhandlung vom freien Gebrauch des Kanons’ has not unjustly claimed Luther as a forerunner … moreover, the services rendered by Luther to the [liberal Protestant] theology of the 19th century in many of its varied schools of thought cannot easily be overlooked.”[1646]
In these remarks there is doubtless much truth, and there are facts which go to bear out the theory that Luther indeed stands in close relations to the modern spirit. There can be no doubt that, in Luther, we find mediæval and modern features combined. What is wanting is an organic connection between the two; as explained in the foregoing volumes it was only at the expense of flagrant contradictions that he took over certain elements from the past while rejecting others; that he took one step forward towards modern infidelity and another backwards. The ancient figure of Janus with one face looking forward into the future and the other back upon the past was harmonious, at least inasmuch as the two faces were depicted as separate. In Luther, however, the two faces are one, a fact which scarcely improves his physiognomy.
From the recent studies on Luther we can now see more clearly than before that a “revision of the whole conception and appreciation of Luther” is imperative in his own household. But, in view of all the work already done, “is it not high time for us to expect an estimate of the Reformation as a whole which shall also be just to the whole Luther?” Stephan, who asks this question, answers it as follows: “We are still to-day in the midst of a new development that started more than a century since from the contrast presented by the different schools of thought.”[1647]