19 The Fatalist Luther.
16. The Fatalist Luther.
Catholic writers have discovered a fatalistic tendency in Luther’s teaching of justification by faith without works. They declare that Luther’s theory of the utter depravity of man by reason of inherited sin and his incapacity to perform any work that can be accounted good in the sight of God kills every ambition to virtuous living in man. They argue that when you tell a person that he is not capable to do good, he is apt to believe you and make no effort to perform a good deed. The situation becomes still worse when the divine predestination is introduced at this point, as has been done, they say, by Luther. If God has determined all things beforehand by a sovereign decree, if there really is no such thing as human choice, and all things occur according to a foreordained plan, man no longer has any responsibility. He is reduced to an automaton. Free will is denied him; he cannot elect by voluntary choice to engage in any God-pleasing action; for he is told that his natural reason is blinded by sin and his understanding darkened, rendering it impossible for him to discern good and evil, and leading him constantly into errors of judgment on what is right or wrong, while he is made to believe that his will is enslaved by evil lusts and passions, ever prone to wickedness and averse to godliness. As a consequence, it is claimed, man must necessarily become morally indifferent: he will not fight against sin nor follow after righteousness, because he has become convinced that it is useless for him to make any effort either in the one direction or in the other. The doctrine of man’s natural depravity and the divine foreordination of all things, it is held, must drive man either to despair, insanity, and suicide, or land him hopelessly in fatalism: he will simply continue his physical life in a mechanical way, like a brute or a plant; he merely vegetates.
These fatal tendencies which are charged against Luther are refuted by no one more effectually than by Luther himself. As regards the doctrine of original sin and man’s natural depravity, Luther preached that with apostolic force and precision. That doctrine is a Bible-doctrine. No person has read his Bible aright, no expounder of Scripture has begun to explain the divine plan of salvation for sinners, if he has failed to find this teaching in the Bible. This doctrine is, indeed, extremely humiliating to the pride of man; it opens up appalling views of the misery of the human race under sin. We can understand why men would want to get away from this doctrine. But no one confers any benefit on men by minimizing the importance of the Bible-teaching, or by weakening the statements of Scripture regarding this matter. Any teaching which admits the least good quality in man by which he can prepare or dispose himself so as to induce God to view him with favor is a contradiction of the passages of Scripture which were cited in a previous chapter, and works a delusion upon men that will prove just as fatal as when a physician withholds from his patient the full knowledge of his critical condition. Yea, it is worse; for a physician who is not frank and sincere to his patient may deprive the latter of his physical life, but the teacher of God’s Word who instils in men false notions of their moral and spiritual power robs them of life eternal.
Luther avoided this error. He led men to a true estimate of themselves as they are by nature. But over and against the fell power of sin he magnified the greater power of divine grace. "Where sin abounded, grace hath much more abounded" (Romans 5:20),--along this line Luther found the solution for the awful difficulty which confronts every man when he studies the Bible-doctrine of original sin, and when he discovers, moreover, that this Bible-doctrine is borne out fully by his own experience. Just for this reason, because man can do nothing to restore himself to the divine favor, God by His grace proposes to do all, and has sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to do all, and, last not least, publishes the fact that all has been done in the Gospel of the forgiveness of sin by grace through faith in Christ. Luther has taught men to confess: "I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ or come to Him," but he taught them also to follow up this true confession with the other: "The Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith." The Gospel is called in the Scriptures "the Word of Life," not only because it speaks of the life everlasting which God has prepared for His children, but also because it gives life. It approaches man, dead in trespasses and sins, and quickens him into new life. It removes from the mind of man its natural blindness and from the will of man its innate impotency. It regenerates all the dead powers of the soul, and makes man walk in newness of life. The difficulty which original sin has created is not greater than the means and instruments which God has provided for coping with it. "God hath concluded all in unbelief, that He might have mercy on all." (Romans 11:32) This is the only true salvation, every other is fictitious. It teaches man both to face the fearful odds against him because of his corruption, and to relish all the more the points in his favor by reason of God’s redeeming and regenerating grace. It starts its work with crushing man’s pride and self-confidence utterly, and hurling him into the abyss of despair, but it lifts him out of despair with a mighty power that breaks the power of evil in him. This change is brought about in such a gentle, tender way that the sinner has no sensation of being coerced into the new life by some farce which he cannot resist. It wins him over to God and his Christ in spite of his resistance, and makes out of his unwilling heart a willing one, which gladly coincides with the leadings of grace. The Roman scheme of salvation might be called the ostrich method: it teaches men the foolish strategy of the bird of the desert, which hides its head in the sand when it sees an enemy approaching, and then imagines the enemy does not exist. Original sin may be disputed out of the Bible by a false interpretation, but it is not thereby ruled out of existence. When face to face with his God--if no sooner, then in the hour of death--every man feels that he is utterly corrupt and worthless, and he will curse any teacher that caused him to believe otherwise. Free will is not created by assertions. Let the apostles of free will only try, and they will find out that their freedom is nil. Catholics denounce Luther for having declared the free will of man to be nothing than a word without substance: we hear the sound when the word is pronounced, and grasp its grammatical meaning, but we do not realize it in ourselves. Every person, however, who has truly come to know himself will side with Luther, or rather with the Bible. Furthermore, to the same extent to which the Roman view exalts man’s natural powers for good, it lowers and limits the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and begets a false confidence and security that is rudely shaken when the first slip and fall occurs in the person’s Christian life. He has never really laid hold of the grace of God, because he has not been taught to trust only to the grace of God to lead and preserve him in the way of life. He will begin to distrust the Gospel as a very inefficient instrument, and this will lead him to become indifferent to it, and finally fall away from it entirely. A real danger of apostasy and despair exists wherever the Roman dogma of man’s natural free will is proclaimed.
It is, however, doing Luther a flagrant injustice when he is made to deny that man has no longer any natural reason and will in the secular affairs of this life. Luther used to divide the entire life of man into two hemispheres, the upper embracing man’s relation to God, holy things, the interests of the soul here and hereafter, and the lower, embracing the purely human, temporal, and secular interests of man. It is only in the higher hemisphere that Luther denies the existence of free will. Throughout his writings Luther asserts the existence, the actual operation, and the necessity of human free will, though sadly weakened by sin, in the affairs of this present life. It will be sufficient to cite as evidence the Augsburg Confession which was drawn up with
Luther’s aid and submitted to Emperor Charles V in 1530 as the joint belief of Luther and his followers. "Of the Freedom of the Will," say the Protestant confessors, "they teach that man’s will has some liberty for the attainment of civil righteousness and for the choice of things subject to reason. Nevertheless, it has not power, without the Holy Ghost, to work the righteousness of God, that is, spiritual righteousness, since the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:1-16;1 Corinthians 14:1-40); but this righteousness is wrought in the heart when the Holy Ghost is received through the Word. These things are said in as many words by Augustine in his _Hypognosticon_ (Book III): ’We grant that all men have a certain freedom of will in judging according to natural reason; not such freedom, however, whereby it is capable, without God, either to begin, much less to complete aught in things pertaining to God, but only in works of this life, whether good or evil. "Good" I call those works which spring from the good in Nature, that is, to have a will to labor in the field, to eat and drink, to have a friend, to clothe oneself, to build a house, to marry, to keep cattle, to learn divers useful arts, or whatsoever good pertains to this life, none of which things are without dependence on the providence of God; yea, of Him and through Him they are and have their beginning. "Evil" I call such things as, to have a will to worship an idol, to commit murder,’ etc." (Art. 18.)
Luther has always held that there is a natural intelligence and wisdom, a natural will-power and energy which men employ in their daily occupations, their trades and professions, their trade and commerce, their literature and art, their culture and refinement, yea, that there is also a natural knowledge of God even among the Gentiles, who yet "know not God," and a seeming performance of the things which God has commanded. But these natural abilities do not reach into the higher hemisphere; they cannot pass muster at the bar of divine justice. They do not spring from right motives, nor do they aim at right ends; they are determined by man’s self-interest. They come short of that glory which God ought to receive from worshipers in spirit and in truth (Romans 3:23;John 4:23); they are evil in as far as they are the corrupt fruits of corrupt trees. In condemning the moral quality of these natural works of civil righteousness, Luther has said no more than Christ and His apostles have said.
Luther taught the Bible-doctrine that there is in God a hidden will which He has reserved to His majesty (Deuteronomy 29:1-29); that His judgments are unsearchable and His ways past finding out (Romans 11:33); that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without His will, and that the very hairs of our head are numbered (Matthew 10:29-30); that no evil can occur anywhere without His permission (Amos 3:1-15;Amos 6:1-14;Isaiah 45:1-25;Isaiah 7:1-25). To deny these truths is to reject the Bible and to destroy the sovereign omniscience and omnipotence of God. Those who attack Luther for believing that also the evil in this world is related to God will have to change their bill of indictment: their charge is really directed against Scripture. Luther has, however, warned men not to attempt a study of this secret will of God, for the plain reason that it is secret, and it would be blasphemous presumption to try and find it out. All our dealings with God must be on the basis of His revealed will. If we only will study that, we will be fully occupied our whole life. As regards the Scriptural doctrine of predestination, that those who ultimately attain to the life everlasting have been chosen to that end, Luther has warned men not to study this doctrine outside of Christ and the Gospel. God has told His children for their comfort amid the vicissitudes of this life that He has secured their eternal happiness against all dangers, but He has not asked them, nor does He permit them, to find out _a priori_ whether this or that person is elect. Jesus Christ is the Book of Life in which the elect are to find their names recorded, and in the general way of salvation through repentance, faith, and sanctification of life they are to be led to the heritage of the saints in light. In his summary of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of Romans, Luther states that by His eternal election God has taken our salvation entirely out of our hands and placed it in His own hands. "And this is most highly necessary. For we are so feeble and fickle that, if salvation depended upon us, not a person would be saved; the devil would overcome them all. But since God is reliable and His election cannot fail or be thwarted by any one, we still have hope over and against sin. But at this point a limit must be fixed for the presumptuous spirits who soar too high. They lead their reason first to this subject, they start at the pinnacle, they want to explore first the abyss of the divine election, and wrestle vainly with the question whether they are elect. These people bring about their own overthrow: they are either driven to despair or become reckless.--Follow the order of this Epistle: First, occupy yourself with Christ and the Gospel, in order that you may learn to know your sin and His grace; next, begin to wrestle with your sin, as chapters 1-8 teach you to do. Then, after you have reached the doctrine concerning crosses and tribulations in the eighth chapter, you will rightly learn the doctrine of election in chapters 9-11, because you will realize what a comfort this doctrine contains. For the doctrine of election can be studied without injury and secret anger against God only by those who have passed through suffering, crosses, and anguish of death. Accordingly, the old Adam in you must be dead before you can bear this subject and drink this strong wine. See that you do not drink wine while you are still a babe. There is a proper time, age, and manner for propounding the various doctrines of God to men." What is there fatalistic about this?