As regards Scholasticism, Luther holds that its teaching on original sin was very faulty, because it “dreamt” that original sin, like actual sin, was entirely removed (by baptism).[229] This is one of his first attacks on a particular doctrine of Scholasticism, his earlier opposition having been to Scholasticism in general. The blame he here administers presupposes the truth of his view that concupiscence and original sin come under the same category, and that the former is culpable. Almost all the Scholastics had made the essence of original sin to consist in the loss of original justice, whilst allowing that its “materiale,” as they called it, lay in concupiscence, so that without any “dream” it was quite easy to conceive of original sin as blotted out, while the “materiale” or “fomes peccati” or concupiscence remained.[230] Other examples of how Luther, partly owing to his ignorance of true Scholasticism, came to bring the most glaring charges against that school, will be given later.
Actual sins remain, according to Luther, even after forgiveness, for they too are only covered over. Formerly, it is true, he admits having believed that repentance and the sacrament of penance removed everything (“omnia ablata putabam et evacuata, etiam intrinsece”), and therefore in his madness he had thought himself better after confession than those who had not confessed.[231] “Thus I struggled with myself, not knowing that whilst forgiveness is certainly true, yet there is no removal of sin.”
Not only does real sin continue to dwell in man through concupiscence, but, according to a further statement of Luther, the keeping of God’s law is impossible to man. “As we cannot keep God’s commandments we are really always in unrighteousness, and therefore there remains nothing for us but to fear and to beg for remission of the unrighteousness, or rather that it may not be imputed, for it is never altogether remitted, but remains and requires the act of non-imputation.[232]
But how, then, he must have asked himself in following out the train of thought of his new system, if, owing to the depravity of human nature as the result of original sin there remains in man no freedom in the choice of good? “Where does the freedom of the will come in?” he asks, as it follows from the Apostle’s teaching that “the keeping of the law is simply impossible” (“sæpius dixi, simpliciter esse impossibile legem implere?”).[233] He hesitates, it is true, to deny free will, but only for a moment, and then tells us boldly that the will has been robbed of its freedom (of choosing) good. “Had I said this, people would curse me,” but, according to him, it is St. Paul who advocates the doctrine that without grace there is no freedom of the will in the choice of good which can please God.[234] Here we have a foretaste of the doctrine Luther was to express at the Leipzig disputation and elsewhere, viz. that the freedom of the will for good is merely a name (“res de solo titulo”),[235] and of that later terrible thesis of his that free will in general is dead (“liberum arbitrium est mortuum”),[236] a thesis he defended more particularly against Erasmus.
The young Monk was thus prepared to admit all the consequences of his new ideas, whereas the Apostle Paul, more particularly in his Epistle to the Romans, recognises the ability of man for natural goodness, and speaks of the law of nature in the heathen world and the possibility and actuality of its observance. “They do by nature the things of the law” (Rom. ii. 14). Luther will only allow that they do such things by means of grace, and the word grace again he uses merely for the grace of justification. His opinion with regard to the virtues of the heathen sages is noteworthy. He says that the philosophers of olden time had to be damned, although they may have been virtuous from their very inmost soul (“ex animo et medullis”), because they had at least experienced some self-satisfaction in their virtue, and, in consequence of the sinfulness of nature, must necessarily have succumbed to sinful love of self.[237] Not long after, i.e. as early as 1517, he declares in his MS. Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews their virtues to be merely vices (“revera sunt vitia”).[238]
But what place is given to the virtues of the righteous in Christianity? “As even the righteous man is depraved by sin he cannot be inwardly righteous without the mercy of God.... In the believers and in those who sigh unrighteousness is absent only because Christ comes to their assistance with the fulness of His sinlessness, and covers over their imperfections.”[239] Even when we “do good, we sin” (“bene operando peccamus”), so runs his paradoxical thesis; “but Christ covers over what is wanting and does not impute it.” And why do we always sin in doing good? “Because owing to concupiscence and sensuality we do not perform the good with the intensity and purity of intention which the law demands, i.e. not with all our might (‘ex omnibus viribus,’ Luke x. 27), the desires of the flesh being too strong.”[240] The Church, on the other hand, teaches that good works done in the state of sanctifying grace are pleasing to God in spite of concupiscence, which, it is true, remains after baptism and after the blotting out of original sin which ensued, but which is not sinful so long as there is no consent to its enticements.
As regards the distinction between mortal and venial sin, we find Luther’s doctrine has already reached its later standpoint, according to which there is no difference between them. In the same way he already denies the merit of good works. “It is clear,” he writes, “that according to substance and nature venial sin does not exist, and that there is no such thing as merit.”[241] All sins, in his opinion, are mortal, because even the smallest contains the deadly poison of concupiscence. With regard to merit, according to him, even “the saints have no merit of their own, but only Christ’s merits.”[242] Even in their actions the motive of perfect love was not sufficiently lively. “If it might be done unpunished and there were no expectation of reward, then even the good man would omit the good and do evil like the bad.”[243]
With this pessimistic view of Luther’s we conclude our preliminary glance at the theological goal to which his development had led him. We will not at present pursue further the theme of pessimism which might be brought out more clearly in the light of the doctrine contained in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans regarding absolute predestination to hell, and resignation to hell as the highest act of virtue.[244] All the new doctrines we have passed in review may be regarded as forerunners of the great revolution soon to come; we see here in these questions of doctrine the utter lack of respect and the boldness which the originator of this revolutionary theology will, later on, manifest against the Church, when it became clear that, without being untrue to herself, she could not approve his teaching. Meanwhile the connection of these doctrines among themselves and with the coming world-historic movement calls for