“Nam lex [non mentiendi] quantum ad id, ubi concurrit familiare consilium Spiritus Sancti, per ipsum Spiritus Sancti consilium revocatur, et ita non erit contra conclusionem et, ubicunque cum mendacio, secundo modo accepto, concurrit consilium Spiritus Sancti, ibi excusatur a peccato; et per hoc multa mendacia excusari possent.” (In III Sent. dist. 38, q. unica.)
Biel appeals to St. Augustine’s excuse of Jacob’s lie to his father Isaac, and then proceeds to justify it on Nominalist grounds; the “potentia Dei absoluta” can make lies lawful; by virtue of this “potentia” the Holy Ghost, in such inspired cases, can suspend for the while the prohibition. Biel himself had only the Old Testament instances in view, but the theory was a dangerous one.
13. Luther’s lack of the missionary spirit
Walter Köhler in his article “Reformation und Mission” (in the Swiss “Theologische Zeitschrift,” 1911, pp. 49-60) seeks to find the reason for the Reformers’ lack of interest in the Missions. (See above, vol. iii., p. 213 ff.) It cannot be simply because they were too busy with Rome, for this might indeed explain their not sending out missionaries but not the fact that even the thought of so doing never occurred to them. Yet a movement which professed to be Evangelical and to take as its standard the Apostolic Church should surely have concerned itself more about the heathen.
Against those who argue that the absence of missionary effort was due to Luther’s eschatological expectations and his belief in the nearness of the Last Day, Köhler points out that the teaching of history rather shows that such expectations, far from hindering, tend to promote missionary work. He alludes, for instance, to the rapid spread of Christianity at a time when the Second Coming was thought so near. He might also have referred to the case of St. Gregory the Great, who, though he believed the end of the world to be imminent, did not scruple to send his missionaries to England.
Others have said that the Reformers had no knowledge of the number of the heathen. But, as Köhler urges, though their knowledge was small compared with ours, yet they were not wholly ignorant of the state of things. They had at least heard of the discovery of America, as we see, for instance, from a sermon of Luther (Weim. ed., 10, 1, 1, p. 21), where he says: “Quite recently many islands and lands have been found, to which, so far, in fifteen hundred years, nothing of this grace (of the Gospel) has been proclaimed.”
The real reason is found by Köhler in the exegesis and theology of the Reformers: Luther, for instance, opined that the Apostles alone had been commanded to carry the Gospel throughout the world. He also followed the olden view that the Apostles had actually preached the Gospel to the very ends of the earth. Hence, since Apostolic times, no one is any longer under any obligation to preach Christ everywhere; we are now no longer apostles, but merely parish-priests.
His theology also comes into play in this. For God alone calls men to faith and salvation; He it is Who assembles His elect from among the heathen. But if it is God alone who arouses the faith in helpless man, then organised activity is useless. True to his principles the Reformer left the conversion of the heathen in the hands of God. To him an organised mission would have seemed to partake of the evil nature of work-service.