of faith.
The denial of free-will seems to him in this regard quite attractive—such at least is the impression conveyed. For, when we deny the freedom of the will, so much becomes contradictory and mysterious to our reason. But so much the better! “Reason speaks nothing but madness and foolishness, especially concerning holy things.”[805] “Faith,” so he declares at great length, “has to do with things that do not appear (Heb. xi. 1); in order that true faith may enter in, everything that is to be believed must be wrapped in darkness. But things cannot be more completely concealed than when what is seemingly contradictory is presented to the mind, to the senses and to experience.”[806] In the present case, according to Luther, the apparent injustice of God in the “seemingly unjust” punishment of sinners, who are not free agents, is a grand motive for faith in His Justice.[807] Luther here displays his love of paradox. Even more than in his other writings plentiful opportunity for paradox presents itself in the “De servo arbitrio,” and of it he makes full use. “God makes alive by putting to death,” he writes in the passage under consideration, “He renders guilty and thereby justifies; He drags down the soul to hell and thereby raises it to heaven.”
Among the forcible expressions by which, here as elsewhere, he attempts to convince both himself and others, that he is in the right, are the following: “Liberty of choice is a downright lie (‘merum mendacium’).”[808] “Whoever assigns free-will to man, thereby makes him Divine, and thus commits the worst form of sacrilege.”[809] “To get rid altogether of the term free-will would be the best and most pious work (‘tutissimum et religiosissimum’).”[810] Whoever follows the road of Erasmus “is rearing within himself a Lucian—or a hog of the breed of Epicurus.”[811] “Erasmus concedes even more to free-will than all the sophists hitherto.”[812] “He denies Christ more boldly than the Pelagians,”[813] and those who hold with him are “double-dyed Pelagians, who merely make a pretence of being their opponents.”[814] But he himself, Luther, had never fallen so low as to defend free-will: “I have always, up to this very hour, advocated in my writings the theory that free-will is a mere name.”[815]
In this last assertion he repudiates his Catholic days and refuses even to take into account the works dating from that time; in his Commentary on the Psalms he had expressly admitted free-will for doing what is good and for the choice in the matter of personal salvation; it is true, however, that he never published this work. But in many of the writings composed and published even after his apostasy he had clearly assumed free-will in man and made it the basis of his practical exhortations, as shown above (p. 239). Now, however, he prefers to forget all such admissions.[816]
On the other hand he pretends to recall that in his Catholic days, “Christ had been represented as a terrible judge, Who must be placated by the intercession of His mother and the saints; that the many works, ceremonies, Religious Orders and vows were invented to propitiate Christ and to obtain His grace.”[817] Out of this is forged a fresh proof, drawn from his own experience, of the servitude of the will. For had Christ not been regarded exclusively as a judge, but as a “sweet mediator,” Who by His blood has redeemed all, then recourse would not have been had to the empty works of a self-righteous free-will. As it was, however, he had been made to feel strongly, that this delusion of works and free-will could only lead to despair.—Yet if, in his agony of soul, he really had sought and found peace of conscience in the theory of the enslaved will, how can we explain his many statements, made at almost that very time, concerning his enduring inward anguish and doubts?[818] The Protestant theologian, O. Scheel, the last to translate and expound the “De servo arbitrio,” says of the comfort that Luther professed to have derived from the absence of free-will and from the theory of predestination, that “in the Reformer’s piety a tendency is discernible which militates against the supposed whole-hearted and settled confidence of his faith in the redemption.”[819]
Contradictions formed an integral part of Luther’s psychology. Long pages of this work are full of them, though Luther seems quite unaware of his inconsistencies, obscurities and confusion. Conflicting lines of thought may be traced, similar to those which appeared in the Commentary on Romans (vol. i., p. 256), while the author was still a young man. They indicate a mentality singularly deficient in exactitude and clearness. The workshop where his ideas were fashioned was assuredly not an orderly one.
In the first place the main contention is very involved, while the statements that the will of the man who does what is evil is moved by God seem conflicting. The “movet, agit, rapit” in which the action of God on the will usually consists, does not here assert its sway; the Divine Omnipotence, which, as a rule, is the cause of all action, interferes here, either not at all, or at least less strongly than usual—God must not be made the direct author of sin. This illogical twisting of his theory is particularly noticeable where great sins of mighty consequence are in question. Is God to be regarded as having caused the Fall of Adam and the treason of Judas? Luther certainly does not answer this question in the affirmative so categorically as Melanchthon in his “Loci theologici.”[820] Here he carefully avoids speaking of an irresistible impulse of the will given by God; for the time being we seem to lose sight altogether of God’s imperative and exclusive action.
In the case of the betrayal of Judas, as Scheel points out, Luther does not mention any necessity “which compelled Judas to act as he did”; Luther seems, at least in certain passages, to look on that act as necessary, only because, having been foreseen by God, it “inevitably occurs at the time appointed.”[821] Yet elsewhere he says: “His will [that of the traitor] was the work of God; God by His Almighty Power moved his will as He does all that is in the world.”[822]
A similar confusion is apparent in his statements concerning Adam’s Fall. Adam was not impelled to his sin, but the Spirit of God forsook him, and intentionally placed him in a position in which he could not do otherwise than fall—even though his will was as yet free and though as yet he felt no attraction towards evil as the result of original sin. May we then say after all that God brought about the Fall and was Himself the cause of the depravity of the whole human race through original sin? To this question, which Luther himself raises, the only answer he gives is: “He is God; of His willing there is no cause or reason,” because no creature is above Him and He Himself “is the rule of all things.”[823] Because He wills a thing, it is good, “not because He must or ought so to will.” In the case of the creature it is otherwise; “His will must have reason and cause, not so, however, the will of the Creator.”[824] What seems to follow from these Occamistic subtleties is, that Adam’s sin was after all “brought about by God,”[825] and that Adam could not do otherwise than sin, even though God merely placed him in a position where sin was inevitable, but that he was nevertheless punished, and with him all his descendants. But is it so certain that in Adam’s case Luther excludes a real impulse, a real inner compulsion to transgress? The fact is that certain of his statements on this question present some difficulty. “Since God moves and does all, we must take it that He moves and acts even in Satan and in the godless.”[826] It is true, according to Luther, that He acts in them “as He finds them, i.e. since they are turned away from God and are wicked, and are carried away by the impulse of Divine Omnipotence (‘rapiuntur motu illo divinæ omnipotentiæ’), they do only what is contrary to God and evil. … He works what is evil in the wicked because the instrument, which is unable to withdraw itself from the impelling force of His might, is itself evil.”[827] If this means that the impulse on God’s part must in every case have an effect conformable to the condition of the instrument moved, then, in Adam’s case, its effect should surely have been good, inasmuch as Adam, being without original sin, was not inclined to evil by any passions. If then Adam fell we can only infer that the Almighty allowed an entirely different impulse from the ordinary one to take effect, one which led directly to the Fall. How, in that case, could God be exonerated from being the author of sin? Luther, unfortunately, was not in the habit of reconciling his conflicting thoughts. According to him there is nothing unreasonable in God’s punishing the first man so severely for no fault of his. Why? It is mere “malice on the part of the human heart” to boggle at the punishment of the innocent; it takes for granted the reward which, without any merit on their part, is the portion of the saved, and yet it dares to murmur when the matter is to its disadvantage and the reprobate too receive a reward without