Читать книгу A History of the Reformation (Vol. 1&2) - Thomas M. Lindsay - Страница 58

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From the beginning his lectures on theology differed from those ordinarily given, but not because he had any theological opinions at variance with those of his old teachers at Erfurt. No one attributed any sort of heretical views to the young Wittenberg professor. His mind was intensely practical, and he believed that theology might be made useful to guide men to find the grace of God and to tell them how, having acquired through trust a sense of fellowship with God, they could persevere in a life of joyous obedience to God and His commandments. The Scholastic theologians of Erfurt and elsewhere did not look on theology as a practical discipline of this kind. Luther thought that theology ought to discuss such matters, and he knew that his main interest in theology lay on this practical side. Besides, as he has told us, he regarded himself as specially set apart to lecture on the Holy Scriptures. So, like John Colet, he began by expounding the Epistles of St. Paul and the Psalms.

Luther never knew much Hebrew, and he used the Vulgate in his prelections. He had a huge widely printed volume on his desk, and wrote out the heads of his lectures between the printed lines. Some of the pages still survive in the Wolfenbüttel Library, and can be studied.145

He made some use of the commentaries of Nicholas de Lyra, but got most assistance from passages in Augustine, Bernard, and Gerson,146 which dealt with practical religion,147 His lectures were experimental. He started with the fact of man's sin, the possibility of reaching a sense of pardon and of fellowship with God through trust in His promises. From the beginning we find in the germ what grew to be the main thoughts in the later Lutheran theology. Men are redeemed apart from any merits of their own; God's grace is really His mercy revealed in the mission and work of Christ; it has to do with the forgiveness of sins, and is the fulfilment of His promises; man's faith is trust in the historical work of Christ and in the verity of God. These thoughts were for the most part all expressed in the formal language of the Scholastic Theology of the day. They grew in clearness, and took shape in a series of propositions which formed the common basis of his teaching: man wins pardon through the free grace of God: when man lays hold on God's promise of pardon he becomes a new creature; this sense of pardon is the beginning of a new life of sanctification; the life of faith is Christianity on its inward side; the contrast between the law and the gospel is something fundamental: there is a real distinction between the outward and visible Church and the ideal Church, which latter is to be described by its spiritual and moral relations to God after the manner of Augustine. All these thoughts simply pushed aside the ordinary theology as taught in the schools without staying to criticise it.

In the years 1515 and 1516, which bear traces of a more thoroughgoing study of Augustine and of the German mediæval Mystics, Luther began to find that he could not express the thoughts he desired to convey in the ordinary language of Scholastic Theology, and that its phrases suggested ideas other than those he wished to set forth. He tried to find another set of expressions. It is characteristic of Luther's conservatism, that in theological phraseology, as afterwards in ecclesiastical institutions and ceremonies, he preferred to retain what had been in use provided only he could put his own evangelical meaning into it in a not too arbitrary way.148 Having found that the Scholastic phraseology did not always suit his purpose, he turned to the popular mystical authors, and discovered there a rich store of phrases in which he could express his ideas of the imperfection of man towards what is good. Along with this change in language, and related to it, we find evidence that Luther was beginning to think less highly of the monastic life with its external renunciations. The thought of predestination, meaning by that not an abstract metaphysical category, but the conception that the whole believer's life, and what it involved, depended in the last resort on God and not on man, came more and more into the foreground. Still there does not seem any disposition to criticise or to repudiate the current theology of the day.

The earliest traces of conscious opposition appeared about the middle of 1516, and characteristically on the practical and not on the speculative side of theology. They began in a sermon on Indulgences, preached in July 1516. Once begun, the breach widened until Luther could contrast “our theology”149 (the theology taught by Luther and his colleagues at Wittenberg) with what was taught elsewhere, and notably at Erfurt. The former represented Augustine and the Holy Scriptures, and the latter was founded on Aristotle. In September 1517 he raised the standard of theological revolt, and wrote directly against the “Scholastic Theology”; he declared that it was Pelagian at heart, and buried out of sight the Augustinian doctrines of grace; he lamented the fact that it neglected to teach the supreme value of faith and of inward righteousness; that it encouraged men to seek escape from what was due for sin by means of Indulgences, instead of exhorting them to practise the inward repentance which belongs to every genuine Christian life.

It was at this interesting stage of his own religious development that Luther felt himself forced to oppose publicly the sale of Indulgences in Germany.

By the year 1517, Luther had become a power in Wittenberg both as a preacher and as a teacher. He had become the preacher in the town church, from whose pulpit he delivered many sermons every week, taking infinite pains to make himself understood by the “raw Saxons.” He became a great preacher, and, like all great preachers, he denounced prevalent sins, and bewailed the low standard of morals set before the people by the higher ecclesiastical authorities; he said that religion was not an easy thing; that it did not consist in the decent performance of external ceremonies; that the sense of sin, the experience of the grace of God, and the fear of God and the overcoming of that fear through the love of God, were all continuous experiences.

His exegetical lectures seemed like a rediscovery of the Holy Scriptures. Grave burghers of Wittenberg matriculated as students in order to hear them. The fame of the lecturer spread, and students from all parts of Germany crowded to the small remote University, until the Elector became proud of his seat of learning and of the man who had made it prosper.

Such a man could not keep silent when he saw what he believed to be a grave source of moral evil approaching the people whose souls God had given him in charge; and this is how Luther came to be a Reformer.

Up to this time he had been an obedient monk, doing diligently the work given him, highly esteemed by his superiors, fulfilling the expectations of his Vicar-General, and recognised by all as a quiet and eminently pious man. He had a strong, simple character, with nothing of the quixotic about him. Of course he saw the degradation of much of the religious life of the times, and had attended at least one meeting where those present discussed plans of reformation. He had then (at Leitzkau in 1512) declared that every true reformation must begin with individual men, that it must reveal itself in a regenerate heart aflame with faith kindled by the preaching of a pure gospel.