Luther. Grisar Hartmann

reason, been described as a crippled parody of true Scholasticism. In this, its latest development, Scholasticism had fallen from its height, and, abandoning itself to speculative subtleties, had opened a wide field to Nominalism and its disintegrating criticism. The critical acumen demonstrated by John Duns Scotus, the famous Franciscan Doctor (Doctor Subtilis), who died at Cologne in 1308, the late-comers would fain have further emphasised. Incapable as they were of producing anything great themselves, they exercised their wits in criticising every insignificant proposition which could possibly be questioned in philosophy and theology. The Franciscan, William of Occam (Ockham, Surrey), called Doctor Singularis, or Invincibilis, also Venerabilis Inceptor Nominalium, was one of the boldest and most prolific geniuses of the Middle Ages in the domain of philosophy and theology. His great works, composed during his professorship, especially his Commentary on the Sentences, his “Centifolium” and his “Quodlibeta,” are proofs of this. On theological questions concerning poverty he came into conflict with the Pope, his Sentences were condemned by the University of Paris, he appealed from the Holy See to a General Council, was excommunicated in 1328, protested against the decisions of the General Chapter of the Order, and then took refuge with Lewis of Bavaria, the schismatic, whose literary defender he became. He wrote for him, among other things, his ecclesiastico-political “Dialogus,” and even after his protector’s death continued to resist Clement VI. Occam died at Munich in 1349, reconciled with his Order, though whether the excommunication had already been removed or not is doubtful.

He revived Nominalism in philosophy and theology. His teaching was so much that of the schools through which Luther had been that the latter could declare: “sum occamicæ factionis,”[305] and speak quite simply of Occam as “magister meus.”[306] It cannot, however, be said, as it recently has been, that Luther “prided himself on being Occam’s disciple,” and that he “would not give a refusal to his beloved master”; for it was more in irony than in earnest that he spoke when he said: “I also am of Occam’s party”; and when, as late as 1530, he still speaks of “Occam, my beloved master,”[307] this is said in jest only in order to be able to accuse him more forcibly as an expert with the greatest of errors; nevertheless, he places Occam in point of learning far above Thomas of Aquin, the “so-called Doctor of Doctors,” whom he despised. Regarding, however, the esteem in which Occam was held in his youth, he afterwards said: “We had to give him the title Venerabilis huius sectæ [scholæ] primus repertor,” but adds: “Happy are you [my table-companions] in not having to learn the dung which was offered me.”[308] He felt compelled, nevertheless, to praise Occam’s dialectic skill and his inexhaustible acuteness, and for his part considered him the most gifted of the Schoolmen (“summus dialecticus, scholasticorum doctorum sine dubio princeps et ingeniosissimus”).[309] It was not only at a later period that he was ready to admit his weaknesses, for even at the beginning of his course, in the Commentary on Romans (1515-16), he attacks certain essential errors of Occam and his school.

      His acquaintance with the master he owed, moreover, more to Occam’s disciples, i.e. to the later theologians of the Occamist school, more especially Gabriel Biel, than to his own reading of the voluminous and unwieldy works of Occam himself. We are already aware that, of the disciples and intellectual heirs of Occam, he studied more particularly the two well-known writers d’Ailly, Cardinal of Cambrai—whom Luther usually calls quite simply the Cardinal—whose ideas were very daring, and the humble Gabriel Biel, Professor at Tübingen, whose writings, clear, and rich in thought, possessed many good qualities.

      Their one-sided Nominalism unfortunately led these Occamists to an excessive estimate of the powers of nature and an undervaluing of grace, and also to a certain incorrect view of the supernatural. We must add that they were disposed to neglect Holy Scripture and to set too much store on their speculations, and that, with regard to the relations between reason and faith, they did not abide by the approved principles and practice of the earlier Schoolmen.

      The Occamist theology strongly influenced the talented and critical pupil, though diversely. Most of the elements of which it was made up repelled him, and as he regarded them as essential parts of Scholasticism, they filled him with a distaste for Scholasticism generally. Other of its elements attracted him, namely, those more in conformity with his ideas and feeling. These he enrolled in the service of his theological views, which—again following Occam’s example—he developed with excessive independence. Thus the tendency to a false separation of natural and supernatural commended itself to him; he greedily seized upon the ideas of Nominalism with regard to imputation after he had commenced groping about for a new system of theology. His greatest objection was for the views of his teachers regarding the powers of man and grace. This it was, more especially, which raised in him the spirit of contradiction and set him on a path of his own. To one in his timorous state such views were unsympathetic; he himself scented sin and imperfection everywhere; also he preferred to see the powers of the will depreciated and everything placed to the account of grace and Divine election. Thus, what he read into Holy Scripture concerning faith and Christ seemed to him to speak a language entirely different from that of the subtleties of the Occamists.

      His unfettered acceptance or rejection of the doctrinal views submitted to him was quite in accordance with his character. He was not one to surrender himself simply to authority. His unusual ability incited him to independent criticism of opinions commonly received, and to voice his opposition in the public disputations against his not overbrilliant Nominalist professors; the strong appeal which he made to the Bible, with which the others were less well acquainted, and to the rights of faith and the grace of Christ, was in his favour.

2. Negative Influence of the Occamist School on Luther

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Besides the recently published Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans various statements in his sermons, disputations and letters prove the opposition that existed between Luther and his own school. In the Disputation of 1517 entitled “Contra scholasticam theologiam,” for instance, he expressly names, as the opponents against whom his various theses are aimed, Scotus, Occam, the Cardinal, Gabriel, and, generally, “omnes scholastici” or “communis sententia,” “dictum commune,” “usus multorum,” “philosophi” or “morales.”[310]

      Before we proceed to examine the individual points of Luther’s conflict with Occamism and with what he considered the teaching of Scholasticism as a whole, two general points of this opposition must be mentioned. His first grievance is the neglect of Holy Scripture.

A sensible want in the Divinity studies of that time lay, as a matter of fact, in the insufficient use of the positive foundations of theology, i.e. above all of Holy Scripture, and also of the tradition of the Fathers of the Church and the decisions of the Church in her office as teacher. “Luther had rightly recognised,” says Albert Weiss, “what harm resulted from the regrettable neglect of Holy Scripture on the part of so many theologians, and therefore he chose as his watchword the cry for the improvement of theology by a return to the Bible.”[311] “That Luther was moved to great anger by the Nominalists’ neglect of the Bible is not to be wondered at.”[312] “He would not have been Luther,” the same author rightly says, “had he not soon veered round to the other extreme, i.e. to the battle-cry: Scripture only, and nothing but the Scripture, away with all Scholasticism.”

This abuse, however, had already been reproved and bewailed by the Church before Luther’s time; there