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Luther's Development of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith Only
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2011
Extract
One of the best-known stories about Luther relates that while at Rome in December, 1510, he began climbing on his knees, for the indulgence to be thus acquired, the Scala Santa, but that, before he reached the top he remembered the text, “The just shall live by faith,” and he desisted. If authentic, this anecdote proves that he had thus early attained to the fundamental doctrine of the Reformation. The source of the story is a reminiscence of Luther's son Paul, who says that he heard it from his father when he was eleven years old but did not write it down until thirty-eight years later. Such testimony to any fact is necessarily unreliable at least in details, and now that the same story has been found, in a very different form, in one of Luther's own sermons, Paul's version of it must be abandoned. In 1545 the Reformer relates that, while at Rome, he ascended the Holy Stairs with the purpose of getting the soul of an ancestor out of purgatory, but that when he arrived at the top he thought, “Who knows whether this prayer avails?” As this is assuredly no proof that he had by this time arrived at the sola fides, the only decisive reason for placing his acquisition of that doctrine prior to 1510 disappears, and we are thrown back on the earlier, contemporary sources, which in any case are more trustworthy, to trace the gradual development of that important dogma in his mind.
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References
1 Workman: Christian Thought to the Reformation, 1911, 242 f. A good example of this is Eck's statement at the Leipsic debate that a good work was due to God “totum” but not “totaliter.” O. Seitz: Der authentische Text der Leipziger Disputation, 54.
1a This statement, and several others in the present study, will be elucidated by reference to my essay on “Luther's Development in the Light of Psycho-analysis” in The American Journal of Psychology, 1913, xxiv, pp. 360–377.Google Scholar
2 Denifle, H. P.: Luther und Lutherthum. Ergänzungsband. Die abendländische Schriftausleger bis Luther über Justitia Dei. 1905.Google Scholar;
3 H. Grisar: Luther, ii, 470.
4 A. V. Müller: Luthers theologische Quellen, 1912, 235 ff.
5 Though contrary to the now accepted theory of the Church, indulgences were often represented as forgiving “culpa” as well as “poena.” So the indulgence at Einsiedel quoted by S. M. Jackson: Zwingli, 99.
6 See the sources published in B. J. Kidd: Documents of the Continental Reformation, nos. 1–10.
7 Werke, Weimar, xlvi, 8.
8 Luther's teacher, Dr. Usingen, testifies that in 1511 Luther was satisfied with his profession. Paulus: Usingen, 17. Other passages in his letters and in the Commentary on Romans show that this was true in 1515 and 1516. Römerbrief, Scholien, 318.
9 The date of the journey to Rome is given as one year later in Köstlin-Kawerau: Martin Luther (1903), i. 89, and this is followed by McGiffert: Martin Luther, 37 ff. and by Köhler, W.: s.v. “Luther” in Scheel's Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. But Professor Kawerau has now become convinced of the greater probability of the earlier date (Lutherkalendar, 1910)Google Scholar which is also given in Grisar: Luther, i, 21 ff., and in my Life and Letters of Martin Luther, 16. Its correctness is now settled by the recent discovery of a note of the Vicar General, Aegidius of Viterbo, dated January, 1511. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, xxxii, 604.;
10 In August, 1511, Lang matriculated at Wittenberg. Paulus: Usingen, 16. That Luther's transfer took place at about the same time may be inferred partly from this, partly from the fact that he lectured three semesters at Erfurt, beginning November, 1509.
11 Kampschulte: Die Universität Erfurt, ii, 8, note 1, says that according to the custom of the time Luther should have continued lecturing at Erfurt. The degrees he took there were “baccalaureus ad biblia” and “sententiarius”; the doctorate at Wittenberg, October, 1512, was another grievance. An oath to lecture at the university where a man had taken his degree, or had prepared for it, was administered at Paris until 1452. H. Rashdall: Universities of Europe, i, 455 f. See further, my translation of Luther's Correspondence and Other Contemporary Letters, 1913, pp. 30 f.Google Scholar
12 Harnack: History of Dogma (English), v, 210, note.
13 Romans iii, S. Pauli Epistolae, fol. 74, quoted by A. Humbert: Les origines de la théologie moderne, 283.
14 1 Cor. viii, fol. 118b, quoted by E. Doumergue: Jean Calvin, 1899, i, 82.
17 A. V. Müller: Luthers theologische Quellen, Einleitung and passim. Something on the same subject in an article “A German View of the Sola Fides,” by F. Loofs, in the Constructive Quarterly, no. 1, 1913.
18 T. Kolde: Die deutsche Augustiner-Congregation, 22. This provision was later repealed, probably as a consequence of Luther's example.
19 Hic liber est in quo quaerit sua dogmata quisque, Invenit inque illo dogmata quisque sua.
20 Romans iii, 28. On this, my Luther, 267.
21 Werke, Weimar, iv, 113 (1515).
22 ibid. 343 (1513–14), 496 (1514).
23 ibid., iv, 131 (1515).
24 ibid., iii, 73 (1513–14).
25 ibid., i, 41. Sermon of December 27, 1514 or 1515?
26 This simile made a particularly strong impression on Staupitz, who worked it out in his Libellus de executione eternae predestinationis (1515) with a realism revolting to modern taste. See Staupitzens Werke, ed. Knaake, i, 137 ff.
27 Luther was doubtless thinking of this in his Ninety-five Theses, nos. 29, 40.
28 Luther's references to it are so frequent and specific that it is impossible to believe that there was really no crisis at all, as is apparently the opinion of McGiffert, who does not speak of it in his Luther. The dating is more difficult, and is placed in various years from 1508 to 1519 by Böhmer, H., Scheel, O., Kawerau, G., Loofs (Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 1911, 461 ff.), and H. Grisar. I place it in 1515 or early in 1516 chiefly because the thought seems to me lacking in the writings of or earlier than 1515, but fully developed in the letters of 1516 (Enders, i, 28 ff. et saepe), and in other writings of this year, e.g. the Quaestio de viribus (Werke, Weimar, i, 142). Luther himself places it between his two courses on Psalms (1516–18, Scheel: Dokumente, 17), and says that it came to him while lecturing on Romans. Tischreden, Weimar, i, 335. Further he says the crisis came when he was “over thirty.” Werke, Erlangen, xlvi, 78.Google Scholar
29 A. V. Müller: Luthers theologische Quellen, 221.
30 Colloquia, ed. Bindseil, i, 434.
31 Werke, Weimar, iv, 448. In 1516. My dating of the lectures is based on a system of interpolation; the lectures on Psalms being assumed to have lasted from November, 1513, to October, 1516; those on Romans from May, 1515, to October, 1516. The dating, which I have worked out in great detail, is remarkably supported by parallels, but, even if not quite accurate, it is obvious that when the limits of a course are known, the first lectures must fall near the beginning, the last near the end of the term.
32 Römerbrief, Scholien, 206. This comparison of the soul to the bride of Christ was not of course original with Luther. It was the favorite simile of the monks.
33 Enders, i, 64. October 19, 1516. This is of course from Augustine, recalling the saying attributed to him, that the virtues of the heathen were but splendid vices. Cf. also Römerbrief, Scholien, 323.
34 Römerbrief, Scholien, 208. It may be of interest to note that at the Council of Trent, twenty-one theologians were for “certitudo gratiae,” fourteen against it, and two silent. A. V. Müller, op. cit., 219. But the doctrine was rejected. Pastor: History of the Popes, xii, 345.
35 Luther says that the papists believed “Der Munch-Dreck besser quam fides.” Werke, Weimar, xlvi, 296.