Читать книгу Luther - Grisar Hartmann - Страница 37

He spies out many who only act from a desire for the praise of men, and who wish to appear, but not really to be, good. How ready are such, he says, to depreciate themselves with apparent humility. Others only do what is right because it gives them pleasure, i.e. from inclination and without any higher motive. Others do it from vain self-complacency; yea, selfishness is present in almost all, and mars their works. Outward routine and a business-like righteousness spoils a great deal. It is to be deplored that, like the Pharisees, they only keep what is commanded in view and long for the rewards of a busy and petty virtue.[504]

In such descriptions he is easily carried too far and is sometimes even obviously unjust. Thus, for instance, of evil practices he makes conscious theories, in order the more readily to gain the upper hand of his adversaries. “They teach,” he cries, “that it is only necessary to keep the law by works and not with the heart ... their efforts are not accompanied with the least inward effort, everything is wholly external.”[505]

In respect of the doctrine of original sin and its consequences in man, he not only magnifies enormously the strength of the concupiscence which remains after baptism, without sufficiently taking into account the spiritual means by which it can be repressed, but gives the most open expression to his belief that concupiscence is actually sin; it is the persistence of original sin, rendering every man actually culpable, even without any consent of the will. The “Non concupisces” of the Ten Commandments—which the Apostle emphasises in his Epistle to the Romans, though in another sense—Luther makes out to be such a prohibition that, by the mere existence of concupiscence, it is daily and hourly sinfully transgressed. He pays no attention to the theology of the Church, which had hitherto seen in the “Non concupisces” a prohibition of any voluntary consent to a concupiscence existing without actual sin.

His attack on free will is very closely bound up with his ideas on concupiscence.

“Concupiscence with weakness is against the law ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ and it is deadly [a mortal sin], but the gracious God does not impute it on account of the work of salvation which has been commenced in [pardoned] man.” “Even a venial sin,” he teaches in the same passage, “is, according to its nature [owing to human nature which is entirely alienated from God], a mortal sin, but the Creator does not impute (‘imputat’) it as mortal sin to the man whom he chooses to perfect and render whole.”[506]

He makes various attempts to deduce from concupiscence the absolute want in the will of freedom to do what is good. There is not the slightest doubt that he does deny this freedom, though, on the other hand, he grants so much to liberty in his admonitions concerning predestination (see below, p. 219) that he practically retracts his denial. The position he takes up with regard to grace ought to be a test of what he actually held: did he look upon grace as in every case irresistible? But on this very point he is as yet indisposed to commit himself as he will not hesitate to do later, to a positive, erroneous “yes.” In short, though he stands for a denial of liberty, he has not yet seen his way to solve all the difficulties.

If we seek some specimens illustrating the course of his ideas regarding lack of liberty, we find, perhaps, the strongest utterance in his comments on Romans viii. 28: “Free will apart from grace possesses absolutely no power for righteousness, it is necessarily in sin. Therefore St. Augustine in his book against Julian terms it ‘rather an enslaved than a free will.’ But after the obtaining of grace it becomes really free, at least as far as salvation is concerned. The will is, it is true, free by nature, but only for what comes within its province, not for what is above it, being bound in the chain of sin and therefore unable to choose what is good in God’s sight.”[507] Here Luther makes no distinction between natural and supernatural good, but excludes both from our choice; in fact there is no such thing as natural goodness, for what nature performs alone is only sin.

“Where is our righteousness,” he exclaims rhetorically some pages before this, “where are our works, where is the liberty of choice, where the presupposed ‘contingens’ (see above, p. 193)? This is what must be preached, this is the way to bring the wisdom of the flesh to the dust! The Apostle does so here. In former passages he cut off its hands, its feet, its tongue; here he seizes it [the wisdom of the flesh which speaks in defence of free will] and makes an end of it. Here, like a flash of light, it is seen to possess nothing in itself, all its possession being in God.”[508] This, then, is Luther’s conclusion: the elect are not saved by the co-operation of their free will, but by the Divine decree; not by their merits, but by the unalterable edict from above by means of which they conquer all the difficulties in the way of salvation. He is silent here as to whether the elect may not succumb to sin temporarily, either by the misuse of liberty, or from lack of compelling grace.

Towards the end of the Commentary he asserts quite definitely that we are unable to formulate even a good intention with our human powers which could in any way [even in the natural order] be pleasing to God.

He here examines certain opponents, who rightly denied this inability, “otherwise man would be forced to sin.” Further on he attributes to all theologians the teaching of the Occamists (see above, p. 75): “therewith we receive without fail the infusion of God’s grace”; a proposition which certainly sounds Pelagian. He passes over one point which true scholastic theologians did not omit, viz. that God’s supernatural assistance “prevents” our natural will, raises the same into the order of grace, and thus enables us to merit salvation. Further, again disregarding the scholastic teaching, he foists upon all theologians the idea that, having once formed our intention, “we need have no further anxiety, or trouble ourselves to invoke God’s grace.”[509] Such is, according to him, the position of his opponents.

In his answer he does not assert, as regards the first proposition, that God forces us to evil; “the wicked,” he says, “do what they wish, perhaps even with good intentions, but God allows them to sin even in their good works.” Of this, according to him, his opponents must be aware and therefore ought not to act with so much assurance and certainty as though they were really performing good works. Everyone should rather say: “Who knows whether God’s grace is working this in me?” Then only does man acknowledge “that he can do nothing of himself”; only thus can we escape Pelagianism, which is the curse of the self-righteous. “But because they are persuaded that it is always within their power to do what they can, and therefore also to possess grace [here he is utilising some of the real weaknesses of Occamism], therefore they do nothing but sin all the time in their assurance.”[510]

Luther does not here ask himself what else man is to perform in order to possess the grace of God, beyond doing what he can, humbling himself and praying for grace, as all preceding ages had taught. He is still looking for an assurance of salvation by some other method. Only at a later date does he learn, or thinks he learns, how it is to be obtained (by faith alone). Here he merely says: “It is the greatest plague to speak of the signs of possessing grace and thereby to lull man into security.” He has not yet found the assurance of the “Gracious God,” as he is to express it later.

Meanwhile he proceeds, ostensibly following St. Paul, to denounce the principle “he who does what he can,” etc., like wise freewill and the possibility of fulfilling the law.

Paul teaches, for instance, in Romans viii. 3 f.: What the Mosaic law could not do on account of the rebellion of the flesh in man, namely, conquer sin, that God did by the incarnation of His Son, who overcame sin and helps us to fulfil the law; in those who are not born again, sin lives as the “law of sin,” because they are “weak” ἠσθένει against the attacks of concupiscence; on the other hand, the saving grace of the gospel frees us from the “law of sin and death.” To the proposition with which Paul introduces this doctrine, viz. that it had not been possible for the law (i.e. the Mosaic Law) to conquer sin, Luther simply adds: “where now is the freedom of the will?[511] ... the holy Apostle Paul says here expressly that the law was unable to condemn [overcome] sin, or even the weakness which proceeds from the flesh. This is nothing else but the doctrine which I have so frequently been insisting upon, that a fulfilling of the law through our own efforts is impossible; it cannot even be said that we have the power to will and to be able, in such a way as God would have us, viz. by grace [thus it is possible to us to perform what is naturally good]; for otherwise grace would not be necessary, but only useful, and otherwise the sin of Adam would not have corrupted our nature, but have left it unimpaired.... It is true that the law of nature is written in the hearts of all; reason also has a natural desire for what is good, but this is selfish, being directed to our own good, not to that which pleases God; only faith working by love is directed towards God. All that nature desires and acquires, goodness, wisdom, virtue and whatever else there is, are evil goods (‘male bona sunt’), because nature, by original sin, is blinded in its knowledge and chained in its affections, and therefore cannot know God, nor love Him above all things nor yet refer all to Him. Therefore it follows that, without faith and love, man is unable to desire, have, or do anything that is good, but only evil, even when he does what is good.” “Without love, i.e. without the assistance of an external and higher power, he sins continually against the law ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ for this commandment requires that we should not appropriate or seek anything for ourselves, but live, act and think for God in all things. This commandment is simply beyond us.”[512]

His object in thus disparaging liberty is not for the present grounded on the Almighty Power of God, as though this stood in its way, or, as was the case later, on predestination, as though its irrefutable decree were incompatible with liberty, but merely on his exaggeration of the results of original sin with regard to doing what is good (i.e. on concupiscence); he simply moves along the old lines of his distaste for good works and for so-called self-righteousness.[513]

His misinterpretation of the Scholastics, due partly to ignorance, partly to the strength of his prejudice against them, here did him very notable service. He says on one occasion: “In their arbitrary fashion they make out that, on the infusion of grace, the whole of original sin is remitted in everyone just like all actual sin, as though sin could thus be removed at once, in the same way as darkness is dispelled by light.... It is true their Aristotle made sin and righteousness to consist in works. Either I never understood them, or they did not express themselves well.”[514] Here there can be no doubt that the former hypothesis is the correct one. That he did not understand his teachers and the school books is apparent from the following remark: If sin were completely removed in confession (“omnia ablata et evacuata”), then he who comes from confession ought to prefer himself to all others, and not look upon himself as a sinner like the rest. Even the Occamists never provided the slightest ground for such an inference, though they admitted in the justified the entire remission of all sin, original as well as actual. Luther had said in the very passage of the Commentary on Romans just quoted: “the remission of sin is, it is true, a real remission, yet not a removal of sin; the removal is only to be hoped for (“quod non sit ablatio peccati, nisi in spe”) from the giving of grace; grace commences the process of the removal in this way, that the sin is no longer imputed as sin.”[515] But, without recalling his own admission that he may possibly have misunderstood the Scholastics, he goes on to speak of the “deliria” of such Doctors.