Dr. Christopher Scheurl, a Nuremberg lawyer, who was also one of his early patrons and protectors, thanking him in the humble words of exaggerated humanistic courtesy for the praise he had bestowed upon him: he (Luther) recognized that the favour and applause of the world were dangerous for us, that self-complacency and pride were man’s greatest enemies. He, nevertheless, tells him in the same letter that Staupitz, at one time his Superior and Director, had repeatedly said to him much to his terror: “I praise Christ in you, and I am forced to believe Him in you.”[799]
In his exultation at the great success which he had achieved at Wittenberg he says joyfully in the spring of 1517 in a letter to a friend: “Our theology and St. Augustine are progressing happily and prevail at our University (‘procedunt et regnant’, cp. Ps. xliv. 5). Aristotle is at a discount and is hurrying to everlasting destruction. People are quite disgusted with the lectures on the Sentences [of Peter Lombard], and no one can be sure of an audience unless he expounds this theology, i.e. the Bible or St. Augustine, or some other teacher of note in the Church.”[800]
He continued to rifle St. Augustine’s writings for passages which were apparently favourable to his views. He says, later, that he ran through the writings of this Father of the Church with such eagerness that he devoured rather than read them.[801] He certainly did not allow himself sufficient time to appreciate properly the profound teachings of this, the greatest Father of the Church, and best authority on grace and justification. Even Protestant theologians now admit that he quoted Augustine where the latter by no means agrees with him.[802] His own friends and contemporaries, such as Melanchthon, for instance, admitted the contradiction existing between Luther’s ideas and those of St. Augustine on the most vital points; it was, however, essential that this Father of the Church, so Melanchthon writes to one of his confidants, should be cited as in “entire agreement” on account of the high esteem in which he was generally held.[803] Luther himself was, consciously or unconsciously, in favour of these tactics; he tampered audaciously with the text of the Doctor of the Church in order to extract from his writings proofs favourable to his own doctrine; or at the very least, trusting to his memory, he made erroneous citations, when it would have been easy for him to verify the quotations at their source; the only excuse to be alleged on his behalf in so grave a matter of faith and conscience is his excessive precipitation and his superficiality.
Luther’s lectures on the Epistle to the Galatians commenced on October 27, 1516.
These he published in 1519 in an amended form,[804] whereas those on the Epistle to the Romans never appeared to him fit for publication. Notes of the original lectures on Galatians are said to be in the possession of Dr. Krafft of Elberfeld, and will in all probability appear in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works.[805]
The lectures on the Epistle to the Hebrews and on that to Titus followed in 1517. Notes of the former, as stated above, exist at Rome, and their approaching publication will throw a clearer light on the change in the theological views of their author.
In the printed Commentary on Galatians Luther’s teaching appears in a more advanced form. His development had not only progressed during the course of the lectures, but the time which elapsed before their publication brought him fresh material which he introduced into the Commentary. It would be essential to have them in the form in which they were delivered in order to be able to follow up the process which went forward in his mind. It is nevertheless worth while to dwell on the work and at the same time to compare parallel passages from Luther’s other Commentary on Galatians—to be referred to immediately—were it only on account of the delight he takes in referring to this Epistle, or of the fact that his exposition of it runs counter to the whole of tradition.
Luther ever had the highest opinion of the Epistle to the Galatians and of his own Commentaries on it. At a later date he says jokingly: “Epistola ad Galatas is my Epistle to which I have plighted my troth; my own Katey von Bora.”[806] Melanchthon praises Luther’s Commentary on Galatians in a more serious fashion and says, it was in truth “the coil of Theseus by the aid of which we are enabled to wander through the labyrinth of biblical learning.”[807]
Besides the shorter Commentary on Galatians published in 1519 there is also a much longer one compiled from notes of Luther’s later lectures, made public in 1535 by his pupil Rörer, together with a Preface by Luther himself.[808] Protestants consider it as “the most important literary product of his academic career” and, in fact, as “the most important of his theological works.”[809] In what follows we shall rely, as we said before, on the sources which afford the most accurate picture of his views, i.e. on both the shorter and the longer redaction of his Commentary on Galatians, especially where the latter repeats in still more forcible language views already contained in the former.
It is well to know that, in his expositions of the Epistle to the Galatians, Luther’s antagonism to the Catholic doctrine of Works, Justification and Original Sin is carried further than in any other of his exegetical writings, until, indeed, it verges on the paradoxical. Nowhere else does the author so unhesitatingly read his own ideas into Holy Scripture, or turn his back so completely on the most venerable traditions of the Church.
For instance, he shows how God by His grace was obliged to renew, from the root upwards, the tree of human nature, which had fallen and become rotten to the core, in order that it might bear fruit which was not mere poison and sin and such as to render it worthy to be cast into hell fire. Everything is made to depend upon that terrible doctrine of Divine Predestination, which inexorably condemns a portion of mankind to hell. It never occurred to him that this doctrine of a Predestination to hell was in conflict with God’s goodness and mercy, at least, he never had the least hesitation in advocating it. The only preparation for salvation is the predestination to heaven of the man upon whom God chooses to have mercy, seeing that man, on his part, is utterly unable to do anything (“unica dispositio ad gratiam est æterna Dei electio”). Man is justified by the faith, which is wrought by God’s gracious Word and Spirit, but this faith is really confidence in God’s pardoning grace through Christ (“Sufficit Christus per fidem, ut sis iustus”). In the printed Commentary on Galatians we already have Luther’s new doctrine of the absolute assurance of salvation by faith alone.
This later discovery he insists upon, with wearisome reiteration, in the Commentary on Galatians as the only means of bringing relief to the conscience. We shall have occasion later (ch. x., 1, 2) to speak of the origin of this new element in his theology, which he made his own before the publication of the first Commentary on Galatians.
He entirely excludes love from this faith, even the slightest commencement of it, in more forcible terms than ever. “That faith alone justifies,” he writes, “which apprehends Christ by means of the Word, and is beautified and adorned by it, not that faith which includes love.... How does this take place, and how is the Christian made so righteous?” he asks. “By means of the noble treasure and pearl, which is called Christ, and which he makes his own by faith.” “Therefore it is mere idle, extravagant talk when those fools, the Sophists [the scholastic theologians] chatter about the fides formata, i.e. a faith which is to take its true form and shape from love.”[810] The relation which exists between this view of a mechanically operating faith (which moreover God alone produces in us) and the Lutheran doctrine of the exclusive action of God in the “dead tree” of human nature,