Luther, vol. 6 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

Polemical Trend of Luther’s Pedagogics

If we seek to characterise both the writings just spoken of we find that they amount to an appeal called forth by the misery of those times for some provision to be made to ensure a supply of educated men for the future. Frederick Paulsen describes them, particularly the earlier one, as nothing more than a “cry for help, wrung from Luther by the sudden, general collapse of the educational system which followed on the ecclesiastical upheaval.”[21] They were not dictated so much by a love for humanistic studies as such or by the wish to further the interests of learning in Germany, as by the desire to fill the secular-government berths with able, “Christian” men, and, above all, to provide preachers and pastors for the work Luther had commenced and for the struggle against Popery. The schools themselves were unobtrusively to promote the new Evangel amongst the young and in the home. Learning, according to Luther, as a Protestant theologian expressed it, was to enter “into the service of the Evangel and further its right understanding”; “the religious standpoint alone was of any real interest to him.”[22]

Melanchthon’s attitude to the schools was more broadminded. To some extent his efforts supplied what was wanting in Luther.[23] His object was the education of the people, whereas, in Luther’s eyes, the importance of the schools chiefly lay in their being “seminaria ecclesiarum,” as he once calls them. With him their aim was too much the mere promoting of his specific theological interests, to the “preservation of the Church.”[24]

According to Luther the first and most important reason for promoting the establishment of schools, was, as he points out to the “Councillors of all the Townships,” to resist the devil, who, the better to maintain his dominion over the German lands, was bent on thwarting the schools; “if we want to prick him on a tender spot then we may best do so by seeing that the young grow up in the knowledge of God, spreading the Word of God and teaching it to others.”[25] “The other [reason] is, as St. Paul says, that we receive not the grace of God in vain, nor neglect the accepted time.” The “donkey-stables and devil-schools” kept by monks and clergy had now seen their day; but, now that the “darkness” has been dispelled by the “Word of God,” we have the “best and most learned of the youths and men, who, equipped with languages and all the arts, can prove of great assistance.” “My dear, good Germans, make use of God’s grace and His Word now you have it! For know this, the Word of God and His grace is indeed here.”[26]

In many localities preachers of the new faith were in request, moreover, many of the older clergy, who had passed over to Luther’s side, had departed this life or had been removed by the Visitors on account of their incapacity or moral shortcomings. Those who had replaced them were often men of no education whatever. The decline of learning gave rise to many difficulties. Schoolmasters were welcomed not only as simple ministers but, as we have heard Luther declare, even as the candidates best fitted for the post of superintendent.[27] How frequently people of but slight education were appointed pastors is plain from the lists of those ordained at Wittenberg from 1537 onwards; amongst these we find men of every trade: clerks, printers, weavers, cobblers, tailors, and even one peasant. Seven years later, when the handicraftsmen had disappeared, we constantly find sextons and schoolmasters being entrusted with the ministerial office.[28]

This sad state of things must be carefully kept in mind if we are to understand the ideas which chiefly inspired the above writings, and as these have not so far been sufficiently emphasised we may be permitted to make some reference to them.

“We must have men,” says Luther in his first writing, viz. that addressed to the councillors, “men to dispense to us God’s Word and the sacraments and to watch over the souls of the people. But whence are we to get them if the schools are allowed to fall to ruin and other more Christian ones are not set up?”[29] “Christendom has always need of such prophets to study and interpret the Scriptures, and, when the call comes, to conduct controversy.”[30] Similar appeals occur even more frequently in the other writing, viz. that dedicated by Luther to his friend at Nuremberg. Already in his first writing, Luther, as the ghostly counsellor of Germany “appointed” in Christ’s name, boldly faces all other teachers, telling the Catholics, that what he was seeking was merely the “happiness and salvation” of the Fatherland.[31] In the second he expressly states that it is to all the German lands that he their “prophet” is speaking: “My dear Germans, I have told you often enough that you have heard your prophet. God grant that we may obey His Word.”[32] So entirely does he identify the interests of his Church with those of the schools. Well might those many Germans who did not hold with him—and at that time Luther was an excommunicate outlaw—well might they have asked themselves with astonishment whence he had the right to address them as though he were the representative and mouthpiece of the whole of Germany. Such exhortations have, however, their root in his usual ideas of religion and in the anxiety caused by the urgent needs of the time.

At the Coburg the indifference, coldness and avarice of his followers appears to him in an even darker light than usual. He well sees that if the schools continue to be neglected as they have been hitherto the result will be a mere “pig sty,” a “hideous, savage horde of ‘Tatters’ and Turks.” Hence he fulminates against the ingratitude displayed towards the Evangel and against the stinginess which, though it had money for everything, had none to spare for the schools and the parsons; the imagery to which he has recourse leaves far behind that of the Old Testament Prophets.

Here we have the real Luther whom, as he himself admits, though in a different sense, stands revealed in this writing penned at the Coburg.[33] “Is this not enough to arouse God’s wrath?… Verily it would be no wonder were God to open wide the doors and windows of hell and rain and hail on us nothing but devils, or were He to send fire and brimstone down from heaven and plunge us all into the abyss of hell like Sodom and Gomorrha … for they were not one-tenth as wicked as Germany is now.”[34] Has then Christ, the Son of God, deserved this of us, he asks, that so many care nothing for the schools and parsonages, and “even dissuade the children from becoming ministers, that this office may speedily perish, and the blood and passion of Christ be no longer of any avail.”[35] Here again his chief reason for maintaining the schools is his anxiety: “What is otherwise to become of the ghostly office and calling.”[36] Only after he has considered this question from all sides and demonstrated that his Church’s edifice stands in need not merely of “worked stones” but also of “rubble,” i.e. both of clever men and of others less highly gifted,[37] does he come in the second place to the importance of having learned men even in the secular office.