Читать книгу Works of Martin Luther, with Introductions and Notes (Volume II) - Martin Luther - Страница 5

The ban, or excommunication, is the correlative of communion. Our conception of excommunication depends then, of course, upon our view of what constitutes communion. Luther gives us his view of communion in the preceding Treatise concerning the Blessed Sacrament. From the premise there laid down it follows that excommunication, or the ban, excludes only from external membership in the Church, but cannot really separate a man from the Church if he is in personal fellowship with his Lord48. Sin and unbelief cause this separation from Him, and the real ban, therefore, is put into effect not by the Church, but by the man himself when he sins against God. The ban of the Church cannot even deprive one of the Sacrament, but only of the outward use of it, for it can still be partaken of spiritually. This whole position, of course, is fatal to the Roman Catholic conception of the Church, and we do not wonder that it was vigorously opposed by the hierarchy.

Of like significance is Luther's advocacy of the separation of the temporal and spiritual powers, practically of Church and State,—the position which he develops later in the Open Letter to the Nobility. But in this treatise, again, Luther shows himself to be anything but the immoral monster his vilifiers have tried to make of him. He is again the man of conscience—will his critics say, "of oversensitive conscience"? Thank God that there were some sensitive consciences in an almost conscienceless age! Luther fears sin more than the ban, and sin has for him more than an ecclesiastical meaning. Sin is not primarily an act against the Church, but an offence against God. This the ban is to teach; it is to be the symbol of God's wrath against sin and it is to be used by the Church only remedially and in love. When so used it becomes the chastening rod of the dear Mother Church, provided it be accepted and borne in this spirit.

Why, then, did not Luther bear his own ban in this way? The justification for his subsequent conduct is to be found in two brief but important conditional clauses in this treatise. "God," he says, "cannot and will not permit authority to be wantonly and impudently resisted, when it does not force us to do what is against God or His commandments."49 Again he says, "When unjustly put under the ban we should be very careful not to do, omit, say or withhold that on account of which we are under the ban, unless we cannot do so without sin and without injury to our neighbor."50 God and his neighbor were for Luther the actors which made it necessary for him to speak and act, when for selfish reasons he would often rather have remained passive.

The inception of our treatise is to be found in a sermon preached in Wittenberg in the spring of 1518. Luther's pastoral concern for his people made it necessary for him to speak on this subject in order to quiet the consciences both embittered and distressed by the wanton and unjust use of the power of excommunication. Added to this must have been his own personal interest in the ban certain to fall on him. In a letter to Link51, dated July 10, 1518, he speaks of having preached a sermon on the power of the ban which produced general consternation and fear that the ire enkindled by the XCV Theses would start afresh. He had desired a public disputation on the subject, but the Bishop of Brandenburg persuaded him to defer the matter. Under date of September 1st, Luther writes Staupitz52 that because his sermon had been misrepresented and spread by unfriendly spies it became necessary for him to publish it. It appeared in August after Luther's summons to Rome, under the title De Virtute Excommunicationis. Our treatise is an elaboration in popular form of this Latin treatise of 1515.

The Grünberg text given in Clemen, Vol. I, which we have followed in most cases, is dated 1520, and must have appeared in its original edition at the end of 1519 or the beginning of 1520.

The text of the treatise is found in the following editions: Weimar Ed., vol. vi, 63; Erlangen Ed., vol. xxvii, 51; Walch Ed., vol. xix, 1089; St. Louis Ed., vol. .xix, 884; Clemen, vol. i, 213; Berlin Ed., vol. iii, 291.

J. J. SCHINDEL.

Allentown, PA.