Luther Examined and Reexamined / A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation

by W. H. T. Dau

One of the Catholic bishops who was opposed to the dogma of papal infallibility, Reinkens, published a book bearing the remarkable title Revolution and Church. In this book a thought is suggested which connects the Roman Curia with political disturbances that occur in the world. The author regards the declaration of papal infallibility as another step forward in the imperialistic program of the Curia looking towards world-dominion. He argues that it is in the interest of the Vatican policies to foment trouble and breed revolutions in the commonwealths of the world. "The thoughts of the Roman Curia," he says, "are not the thoughts of God. Inasmuch, however, as it is these latter that are realized with increasing force in the history of the world, and that animate the formation of every true civil and ecclesiastical institution, the Curia is gradually forced into a conflict with the whole world. . . . The Curia (to carry its aims into effect) tries one last means: its last attempt is to bring about a revolution. As 'the Church' succeeded in digging her charter out of the ruins of the commonwealths of the ancient world, so the spirits of Vaticanism hope again to rebuild the palace of their dominion out of ruins." (p. 4.) Again: "Bishop Hefele entertains the fear that the recent elevation of the Pope to power (the infallibility dogma) will soon become the primary dogma in the instruction of children. We regret to say that this fear has proven well founded: all the governments, even the German, aid in this instruction of the schoolchildren, because they retain religious instruction on a confessional basis [we in America say on "sectarian" lines], hence also that prescribed by the Vatican, as obligatory, and the infallibilist clergy is salaried by the State for providing this instruction The divine authority of the Pope extending over all men tends to disturb the minds of the children in the schools: they are taught at an early age to obey the Viceregent of God in preference to obeying the Emperor and the State. In the higher schools this is done by the clergy that is commissioned to teach in such schools." (p. 7.) Again: "The Roman order of the Jesuits is not only spread like a net over all countries, but it sinks its roots into every age, sex, estate, and loosens and forces apart the ligaments of civil institutions." (p. 8.)

Luther's views on human free will are brought forward once more to show that his teaching necessarily is hostile to liberty. Luther's famous reply to Erasmus On the Bondage of the Will is made to do yeoman's service in this respect. What Luther has declared regarding the sovereignty of God's rulership over men, regarding the relation of God also to the evil existing in this world, regarding the absence of chance in the affairs of men, regarding man's utter helplessness over and against the supreme will of God, is cited to prove that Luther's teaching leads, not to liberty, but either to recklessness or despair. Luther's views on "the captive, or enslaved, will" are declared to be the most degrading and demoralizing teaching that men have been offered during the last centuries. Luther's famous illustration, viz., that man is like a horse which either God or the devil rides, has prompted the following remarks of one of Luther's most recent critics: "This parable summarizes the whole of Luther's teaching on the vital and all-important subject of man's free will. . . . All who are honest and fearless of consequences must admit in frankest terms that Luther's teaching on free will, as expounded in his book, and explicitly making God the author of man's evil thoughts and deeds, cannot but lend a mighty force to the passions and justify the grossest violations of the moral law. Indeed, the enemy of souls, as Anderson remarks, 'could not inspire a doctrine more likely to effect his wicked designs than Luther's teaching oil the enslavement of the human will.'" There is a dogmatic reason for this excoriation of Luther: Rome's teaching of righteousness by works and human merit. The same author says, in immediate connection with the foregoing: "Likening man to a 'beast of burden,' does Luther not maintain that man is utterly powerless 'by reason of his fallen nature' to lead a godly life, and merit by the practise of virtue the rewards of eternal happiness? Does he not say: 'It is written in the hearts of men that there is no freedom of will,' that 'all takes place in accordance with inexorable necessity,' and that, even 'were free will offered him, he should not care to have it'? But does not all this contradict the Spirit of God when, speaking in the Book of Ecclesiasticus, He says: 'Before man is life and death, good and evil; that which he shall choose shall be given him'?"

We submitted in chap. 15 the Scriptural evidence on the spiritual disability of man. (The passage from Ecclesiasticus in the last quotation is not Scripture.) It is useless to argue with a person who refuses to accept this teaching of Scripture. We can only repeat what we said before: Let the advocates of human free will proceed to do what they claim they are able to do, and do it thoroughly. No one will begrudge them the crown of glory when they obtain it. On the other hand, they will have none but themselves to blame if they do not obtain it. In the light of God's holy Word, in the light, moreover, of the experience of the most spiritual-minded and saintly men that have lived on earth, we see in the claim of the advocates of human free will regarding the fulfilment of God's Law nothing but a vain boast, and a most mischievous attempt to be smarter than God. The theory of salvation by merit is the most disastrous risk that the human heart can take. Christ has mercifully warned men not to take this risk. If they will not hear Him, they will have to perish in their sins (John 8, 24).

In chap. 15 we also explained Luther's views on human free will in the affairs of this life. We only have to add a word on the subject of contingency. Are Luther's Catholic, critics really so blind as not to see that man even in his ordinary affairs of common every-day life is subject to the inscrutable government of God? Our physical life in its most trivial aspects is entirely dependent not only on the laws of nature, which are nothing but the order which the Creator has appointed for the created universe, but also on extraordinary acts of God over which no man has control. The farmer sows his wheat and expects to reap a crop. How? By reason of the power of germination which the Creator has put in the grain, and the laws which govern atmospheric changes, which laws, again, the Creator governs. The farmer can do nothing to make the wheat grow and ripen. He is utterly dependent upon God.—A merchant decides that he will make a business trip to New York. He will leave the next morning on the nine o'clock train. He orders his transportation, and the next morning-he does not leave. "Something happened; I had to change my plans," he tells his friends. Ah, says our Catholic critic, but was he not free to change his mind? We say: You may talk as much as you wish about the person's freedom; the fact remains that the person would not have changed his mind unless he had to. - Let us follow this merchant a little further: He actually starts on his trip two days later. He is to arrive at his destination at two o'clock in the afternoon of the next day, and very much depends on his arriving just at that time. But he does not even get to Cincinnati. "Something happened," he wires to his friend. And now his human free will goes into operation again: he changes his mind. - "Man proposes, but God disposes," this belief is ineradicably written into the consciousness of all intelligent men, even of intelligent pagans, and no philosophy of free will will wipe it out. The wise farmer, after he has finished sowing his field, says, "God willing, I shall reap a good crop." The wise merchant says, "God willing, I shall be in New York to-morrow." And God approves of this wise reservation which causes the prudent to submit their most ordinary actions to divine revision. He says in Jas. 4, 13-16: "Go to now, ye that say, To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain, whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil." Let Luther's Catholic critics wrestle with these and similar texts of Scripture, with these and similar facts of daily life. Luther has rightly declared the sovereignty of God a mighty ax and thunderbolt that shatters the assertion of human free will.

We have shown that Luther is no fatalist. His warning, on the one hand, not to disregard the secret will of God, and on the other, not to seek to find it out, is a masterpiece of wisdom. In view of the absolute sovereignty of God and man's absolute dependence upon it, Luther urges man to go to work in his chosen occupation in childlike reliance upon God. He is to employ to the utmost capacity all his God-given energies of mind and body and work as if everything depended on his industry, strength, prudence, thrift, planning, and arranging. Having done all, he is to say: Dear Lord, it is all subject to Thy approval. Thou art Master; do Thou boss my business. If Thou overrulest my plans, I have nothing to say; Thou knowest better. Not my will, but Thine, be done.

This is the whole truth in a nutshell that Luther drives home in that part of his reply to Erasmus which treats of contingency. If ever statements garbled from the context are unfair to the author, what the Catholics are constantly doing in quoting Luther on the Bondage of the Will is one of the most glaring exhibitions of unfairness on record. This treatise of Luther deserves to be studied thoroughly and repeatedly, and measured against the facts of the common experience of all men. For a profitable study of this treatise there is, moreover, required a very humble mind, a mind that knows its sin, and is sincere in acknowledging its insufficiency.

The generation of Luther and the generations after him have had this particular teaching of Luther before them four hundred years. What effect has it had on human progress in every field of secular activity in Protestant lands? Has it created that chaos and confusion which Catholics claim it must inevitably lead to? Quite the contrary has happened. And now let the patrons of the theory of human free will measure their own success as recorded by history against that of Protestants.

25. "The Adam and Eve of the New Gospel of Concubinage."

This is the honorary title which Catholics bestow upon Martin Luther and Catherine von Bora, who were married June 13, 1525, during the Peasants' War. Luther was forty-two years old at the time and his bride past twenty-six. She had left the cloister two years before her marriage, and had found employment during that time in the home of one of the citizens of Wittenberg. Their first child, Hans, was born June 7, 1526.

The grounds on which Catholics object to this marriage are, chiefly, three. In the first place, they declare the marriage the outcome of an impure relation which had existed between Luther and Catherine prior to their marriage. The marriage had virtually become a matter of necessity, to prevent greater scandal. Moreover, in this impure relationship Luther with his lascivious and lustful mind, in which fleshly desires were continually raging, had been the prime mover. The second ground on which Catholics object to Luther's marriage is, because Luther held professedly low views of the virtue of chastity and the state of matrimony. He had stripped matrimony of its sacramental character, and regarded it as a mere physical necessity and a social and civil contract. Thirdly, Catholics criticize Luther's marriage because it was entered into by both the contracting parties in violation of a sacred vow: Luther had been a monk and Catherine a nun, both sworn to perpetual celibacy.