luther - lectures on romans

8/13/2019 Luther - Lectures on Romans

1/506


2/506

Luther


3/506

General Editors

John Baillie (1886-1960) servedasPresidentof theWorldCouncilofC hurches,amemberof theBritish CouncilofChurches, Moderator of the General Assembly of theChurchofScotland,andDeanof theFacultyofDivinityatthe UniversityofEdinburgh.John T. McNeill(1885-1975) was Professorofthe HistoryofEuropean Christianityatthe UniversityofChicagoandthenAuburn ProfessorofChurch HistoryatUnion TheologicalSeminaryinNew York.Henry P. Van Dusen (1897-1975) wasanearlyandinfluen-tial memberof theWorld CouncilofChurchesandservedat Union Theological SeminaryinNew YorkasRooseveltProfessorofSystematic TheologyandlaterasPresident.


4/506

THE LIBRARY OF CHRISTIAN CLASSICS

LutherLectures on Romans

Edited and translated byW l L H E L M P A U C KT h D


5/506

1961 The W estminster PressPaperback reissued 2006 by Westminster Jo hn Knox Press, Louisville,Kentucky.Allrightsreserved.No part of this book may be rep rodu ced or transmit-ted in any form or by any means, electronic or m echanical, includ ingphotocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrievalsystem, without permission in writing from the publisher. For infor-mation, address Westminster John Knox Press, 100 WitherspoonStreet, Louisville, Kentucky 40202-1396.Cover design by designpointinc. comPublished by Westminster Jo hn Knox PressLouisville, KentuckyThis book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the AmericanNational Standards Institute Z39.48 standard.PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICALibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at theLibrary of Congress, Washington, D.C.ISBN-13:978-0-664-24151-3ISBN-10: 0-664-24151-4


6/506

GENERAL EDITORS' PREFACE

The Christian Church possesses in its literature an abundant andincomparable treasure. But it is an inheritance that must be re-claimed by each generation. T H E LIBRARY OF CHRISTIAN CLASSICSis designed to present in the English language, and in twenty-sixvolumes of convenient size, a selection of the most indispensableChristian treatises written prior to the end of the sixteenth century.The practice of giving circulation to writings selected forsuperior worth or special interest was adopted at the beginningof Christian history. The canonical Scriptures were themselves aselection from a much wider literature. In the patristic era therebegan to appear a class of works of compilation (often designedfor ready reference in controversy) of the opinions of well-reputed predecessors, and in the Middle Ages many such workswere produced. These medieval anthologies actually preserve somenoteworthy materials from works otherwise lost.In modern times, with the increasing inability even of thosetrained in universities and theological colleges to read Latin andGreek texts with ease and familiarity, the translation of selectedportions of earlier Christian literature into modern languages hasbecome more necessary than ever; while the wide range of dis-tinguished books written in vernaculars such as English makesselection there also needful. The efforts that have been made tomeet this need are too numerous to be noted here, but none ofthese collections serves the purpose of the reader who desires alibrary of representative treatises spanning the Christian centuriesas a whole. Most of them embrace only the age of the churchix


7/506

X GENERAL EDITORS PREFA CEfathers, and some of them have long been out of print. A freshtranslation of a work already translated may shed much new lightupon its meaning. This is true even of Bible translations despitethe work of many experts through the centuries. In some instancesold translations have been adopted in this series, but wherevernecessary or desirable, new ones have been made. Notes have beensupplied where these were needed to explain the author's mean-ing. The introductions provided for the several treatises andextracts will, we believe, furnish welcome guidance.

JOHN BAILLIEJOHN T . MC NEILLHENRY P. VAN DUSEN


8/506

C O N T E N T S

pagePREFACE xiiiGENERAL INTRODUCTION xviiLECTURES ON ROMANS

Romans, Chapter On e 3Romans, Chapter Tw o 37Romans, Chapter Thre e 60Rom ans, Chapter Fou r 122Rom ans, Chapter Five 153Rom ans, Chapter Six 177Rom ans, Chapter Seven 193Romans, Chapter Eight 217Romans, Chapter Nine 260Romans, Chapter T en 286Rom ans, Chapter Eleven 305Romans, Chap ter Twelve 320Romans, Chapter Thirtee n 358Rom ans, Chapter Fourteen 378Rom ans, Chapter Fifteen 403

BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND INDEXES 423xi


9/506


10/506

PREFACEThis translation is based on the critical edition of Luther'sRomerbriefvorlesung by Johannes Ficker, published as Vol. 56of the so-called Weimar Edition of Luther's Works (Weimar:Bohlau, 1938). (In referring to this edition, I follow the generalcustom with respect to the use of abbreviations. For example,WA 56, 45, 15 means W eimar Edition, Vol. 56, page 45, line15-)Luther's commentary consists of two parts: the Glossand theScholia.I have translated the latter (W A 56, 155-528) in theirentirety. It would not be practical to translate also all the inter-linear and marginal glosses (WA 56, 1-154). However, I havetranslated all glosses to which Luther himself refers in the Scholia.Moreover, all glosses that contain important interpretations orhave assumed a special importance in modern Luther researchare included in this translation. (They appear in the footnotesat the appropriate places.) In order to give a representative sampleof Luther's method of Biblical interpretation, I have translatedallthe glosses on Rom . 8:18-30.In the Scholia, Luther does not comment on every part ofPaul's letter. He singles out certain terms and passages in orderto discuss them sometimes closely, sometimes generally. However,he does not lose sight of the context in which these terms andphrases stand. In order to enable the reader to see Luther's com-

ments in relation to the entire Pauline letter, I quote the wholepassage of the letter to which the part belongs that Luther dis-cusses. This part is set in boldface type.Ficker attempts to identify all Luther's references to the Bibleand to general and theological literature, historical events, prov-erbs, etc. I have, of course, derived great benefit from his prodi-xiii


11/506

XIV LUTH ER: LECTURES ON ROM ANSgious labors. My explanatory notes are mostly an echo and a re-flection of Ficker's comm ents. In order to enable interested readersquickly to find the more explicit explanations that Ficker offersin his edition, I frequently refer to specific notes of his (e.g., Ficker,p., n. ).Ficker also tries to identify all Luther's Biblical references,whether they were explicit or not. I follow him in this, but I donot indicate in each case whether Luther himself identified thequotation or not. Readers of this translation should be aware ofthe fact that Luther's original lecture notes do not contain all thespecific identifications of quotations from the Bible that are in-cluded in this translation.They should also be mindful of the fact that Luther used theVulgate. In order to reproduce the true character of Luther'sexegesis, it is necessary in this translation to approximate asclosely as possible the words and the mannerisms of the Vulgate,especially where Biblical quotations are involved. I rely, there-fore, on the Douay and Rheims edition of the translation of theLatin Vulgate (Baltimore: Murphy, 1899), but not slavishly so.I think that I can say that my renderings of Luther's quotationsfrom the Bible pretty accurately reflect his usage. (In the num-bering and naming of the Biblical books, I follow, not the Roman,but the Protestant tradition. Where necessary, particularly inconnection with the book of The Psalms, I make the requiredadaptations. At the time of his lectures on Romans, Luther, ofcourse, still followed the Roman tradition.)The most significant part of Ficker's work as editor of theselectures was that he endeavored to show the sources on whichLuther depended. Following Ficker for the most part but not en-tirely, I indicate these sources in the footnotes. (A list of the worksappears in the Bibliography.) The works of the fathers and ofthe Scholastics are quoted in the conventional way so that thesection referred to by Luther can readily be identified in any edi-tion or translation. In certain casesi.e., when commentaries arereferred toit is not necessary to identify the sources. These refer-ences can be found in connection with the exegesis of the Biblicalpassage that is under discussion. Thus, references identified by thename of the author only (e.g., Lyra or Faber) or by the title of awork only (e.g.,Glossaordinaria)are to the Biblical passage un de rdiscussion in the respective commentaries.Occasionally I direct the reader's attention to the treatment ofa particular part of Luther's lectures in a modern work of Lutherinterpretation, but I do this only because, in my judgment, thisdiscussion is especially enlightening. A full list of all books, essays,


12/506

PREFACE XVand articles dealing with Luther's lectures on Romans is given atthe end of this book.

There is a German translation of these lectures by EduardEllwein. The first edition appeared in 1927. The presently avail-able fourth edition was published as a supplement to the so-calledMunich edition of Luther's works. (Martin Luther,AusgewdhlteWerke,ed. by H . H . Borcherdt and Georg Merz. Erganzungsreihe,Vol. II. Miinchen: Kaiser, 1957.) I have carefully compared thistranslation with mine and I have greatly benefited from this com-parison.There exists also an English translation of Luther's lectures,its author John Theodore Mueller, professor in Concordia Theo-logical Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri. (It was published in 1954by Zondervan in Grand Rapids, Michigan.) Mueller himself callshis work a "digest" of Luther's lectures. He translates most of themarginal gloss but omits the major part of the Scholia; moreover,he does not indicate what parts of Luther's work he chooses toinclude or to exclude. He depends heavily on Ellwein, and sig-nificant sections of his translation are not entirely true to theoriginal.

A few of the recent English or American works dealing withLuther contain translations of key passages of Luther's commen-tary. Among these, that ofProf. E. G. Rupp, now of ManchesterUniversity, deserves special mention (The Righteousness of God:Luther Studies. London and New York, 1953). I have gratefullyadopted some of his phrasings. W.P.


13/506


14/506

General Introduction

O NE OF THE MOST THOROUGH OF LUTHER'S MODERNinterpreters, Karl H oll, a scholar who was not readily givento exaggeration, regarded Luther's exposition of the letterto the Romans as a work of genius, "an achievement that remainsunsurpassed even today."1This judgment appears to be supportedby the fact that in recent Luther research the lectures on Ro-mans are treated as one of the most important works of the Re-former.Yet these lectures were published for the first time only in 1908.2Until then, they had been unknown to the readers of Luther'sworks and the students of his thought. But as soon as they becamegenerally available, they were treated as the chief source of theknowledge of Lu ther's theological development. And, indeed, theyshow that the basic ideas of the Protestant Reformation wereformed in Luther's mind before he began his career as a reformer.They also furnish clear and impressive proof that the man who,two years later, on October 31, 1517, was to publish the "Ninety-five Theses on the Power of Indulgences" and who thus chancedto begin the Reform ation, was spiritually and theologically matureand resourceful (he was then thirty-four years old). One can un-derstand why the author of these lectures could not be forced,by the mere assertion of authority, to recant his views and why itwas impossible to silence him by the conventional means of deal-ing with a heretic. Whoever would oppose him in order to refutehim w ould have to meet him on the ground of that understanding Karl Holl, Luthers Bedeutung filr den Fortschrift der Auslegungskunst(Gesamm elte Aufsatze,Vol. I: Luther [sd ed., Tubingen, 1923], p. 550).2 Johannes Ficker,Luthers Vorlesung iiber den Rom erbrief 1515/1516 (Leip-zig,ed. 1908). xvii


15/506

XV111 LUT HE R: LECTURES ON ROM ANSof the gospel which he had slowly achieved by conscientious studyand spiritual struggle.

This evidence of the direction of Luther's thought and of thepower of his mind is all the more impressive because he w rote thedocuments that contain it for his own personal use and not forpublication. He that reads them now encounters Luther as he gotready to teach an academic course on Paul's letter to the Romans.To be sure, he himself seems to have attributed considerable sig-nificance to this work of his, for his own manuscript (which hascome down to us) is written with great care. The major part ofit appears to be the final clean copy which Luther himself pre-pared from notes that he had put on loose slips of paper (calledby him schedaeorschedulae).It was this carefully prepared man-uscript which he used in the classroom.According to the custom of the times, he dictated to his stu-dents the substance of what he wanted them to know. Some of thenotes that the students took down in Luther's course on the letterto the Romans are still in existence.Prof. Johannes Ficker, whodiscovered and first published Luther's lectures and finally editedthem with admirable care in the Weimar Edition of Luther'sWorks, succeeded in locating several sets of them. Not all of themare complete, and not all of them represent the notes that weredirectly taken down in the classroom (a few are copies of suchnotes), but altogether they give a vivid picture of Luther's teach-ing. They show how carefully he dictated (he repeated difficultwords or pronounced them syllable by syllable) and how he spoke(his pronunciation was that of a Saxon and as such he tended topronounce b as if it werep, andg as if it were k,etc., just as theSaxons do today).

A comparison of the students' books with his own lecture notesshows how he used his manuscript: he dictated its philologicalparts almost verbatim, but he greatly abbreviated the theologicalexposition he had written out; he left unmentioned most of thosesections which, from our modern point of view, are the most in-teresting and important ones, namely, those where he sharplycriticizes the church and its theological teachers and administrativeleaders, and especially those where he struggles for the under-standing of the gospel and for the clarity of his own thoughtabout it.I . THE HISTORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTOn October 19, 1512, Luther became a doctor of theology in theUniversity of W ittenberg. Th is prom otion enabled h im to assumethe chair of Biblical theology hitherto occupied by Johann von


16/506

GENERAL INTRODUCTION XIXStaupitz, the General-Vicar of the German (Observant) Congre-gation of the Augustinian Friars, his own superior and specialfriend. Teaching was not new to him. In accordance with therules of medieval universities, he had been an instructor ofsorts ever since he had obtained the degree of M.A. in 1505; par-ticularly since he had become a student of theology, he had taught,in 1508, the basic course in Aristotle in the University of Witten-berg to which he was then temporarily assigned, and, in 1509, hehad been responsible in his own University of Erfurt for the in-troductory course in theology, based on Peter Lombard's FourBooks of Sentences.But now, after his definitive transfer fromErfurt to W ittenberg and on becoming a full mem ber of the theo-logical faculty, he could choose the Biblical courses he wanted toteach.He decided to begin with The Psalms. They kept him busy fortwo years, from the beginning of the summer semester of 1513until the end of the winter semester of 1515. Two of Luther'sown manuscripts of these lectures have come down to us. Theywere found in the latter part of the nineteenth century and pub-lished as Vols. 3 and 4 of the Weimar Edition in 1885.3 Theyshow that Luther followed the methods of interpretation custom-ary in medieval schools, but they also reveal a mind of solidscholarship capable of deep penetration and gifted with creativeoriginality. Luther had the printer Johann Grunenberg, who hada shop in the Augustinian monastery of Wittenberg, print thetext of The Psalms in such a way that there was left a large spacebetween the lines and also a wide margin on each page so thatinterlinear and marginal glosses could readily be inserted. In pre-paring his lectures, Luther entered these two types of glosses inhis own copy of the text. In the classroom, he then dictated themto the students to each of whom he had furnished a printed copyof the Biblical text like his own. We should note that this stillhighly limited use of the art of printing was something novel,and it was perhaps because he was conscious of this that Lutherhad the printer use Roman type which was preferred by the Hu-manists.When he was finished with The Psalms, Luther turned to theletter to the Romans. He followed the same method he had em-ployed in interpreting The Psalms. Grunenberg again had toprint the text in such a way that the glosses could readily be in-serted. It seems that, probably on the advice of Luther, he fol-lowed the Vulgate according to the Basel Edition of 1509, prin ted3This publication was premature, as later studies revealed. It has now beenfound necessary to re-edit these lectures. This work is now in progress.


17/506

xx LUTH ER: LECTURES ON ROMANSby Froben, and that he corrected this version of the text here andthere on the basis of the treatment of the Pauline letters by FaberStapulensis, the French Humanist, in his commentary of 1512-1515. Luther then wrote out his own interlinear and marginalglosses on the twenty-eight leaves of Grunenberg's printed text(each page had fourteen lines) and, on one hundred and twenty-three separate sheets of paper, he prepared his own extended com-mentary. As the student notes show, he used most of his glosses inthe classroom, but only selected parts of the scholia.We know that Luther met these classes of his twice a week,Mondays and Fridays, at 6A.M.He needed three semesters for thecourse on Romans: the summer semester of 1515, the wintersemester of 1515-1516, and the summer semester of 1516. In otherwords, he began at Easter of 1515 and was done in early Septemberof 1516.Careful attention to the marks Luther inserted in his manu-script and a close analysis of the students' manner of writing theirnotes make it possible to tell (from the ink marks and the ductusof the hands of the writers) when the individual lectures were be-gun and ended. Thus Ficker concludes4 that Luther's course onRomans consisted of ninety class hours, and that he dealt withRom. 1:1 to 3:4 during the first semester; during the secondsemester with chs. 3:5 to 8:39; and during the third semesterwith chs. 9:1 to 16:27.Luther remained a professor of Biblical theology until the endof his life and, throughout his career, his academic lectures weredevoted to Biblical exegesis. He next took up the letter to theGalatians5 (winter semester, 1516-1517) and then he turned toThe Letter to the Hebrews (summer semester, 1517, and wintersemester, 1517-1518) in order then to deal once more with ThePsalms. He published a commentary on T he Psalms in 1519-1520(it contains the exegesis of only twenty-two psalms), which wasbased on his lectures, and he also published a commentary on theletter to the Galatians (1519)6 in the preparation of which hemade use of his earlier lecture notes.7 In his later teaching, hedealt repeatedly with certain individual psalms and he publishedhis interpretations of many of them. Moreover, he lectured oncemore on the letter to the Galatians in 1531.8 But he never again4 Cf.WA56, p. XXIX.5WA 57 (Gal.). 6WA 2,451-618.7 A studen t's notebook of Luther's lectures on this letter has survived. It cameto light only in 1877 in the catalog of an antiq ua rian bookseller. I t was fi-nally published byProf. Hans von Schubert in 1916. A final edition wasprepared by K. A. Meissinger for the Weimar edition (Vol. 57, Gal.).8W A 40 ,1, i~688; 40, II,1-184.


18/506

GENERAL INTRODUCTION XXItook up the letter to the Romans. The reason probably was that,soon after becoming a professor in the University of Wittenberg(1518), Philip Melanchthon established the tradition of lecturingon this book of Scripture. It seems not improbable that he madeuse of L uthe r's lecture notes. These appear to have circulated alsoamong others of Luther's friends, followers, and colleagues.As far as we know, Luther himself made no mention of hisRomans manuscript in later years, either in his correspondence orin his table talk. But he must have preserved it carefully, for, afterhis death, it came into the possession of his heirs. They seem tohave treasured it highly. During the last decade of the sixteenthcentury, it was still in the hands of his son, Dr. Paul Luther, aphysician in the service of the elector of Saxony. In a letter of1592,addressed to Anna, Electress of Saxony, he mentions that hewas thinking of arranging for a German translation of his father'searly lectures.9One must assume that it was this Paul Luther who,in 1582, had the manuscript bound in very stately fashion (therich leather covers were decorated with the coat of arms of theelector August of Saxony and his wife, Anna). At about this timethe volume was seen by a certain Johann Wiegand, the authorof a work on Schwenkfeld (De Schwenckfeldismo, 1587). In thededicatory letter that served as a preface, he mentioned that he hadhandled and examined Luther's first works (he called them initiaLutheri). "I have held his own autographs in my hands," he said,"and looked at them with admiration." ("Autographa enim ipsiusin mea manu habui atque inspexi et m iratus sum.")10This testimony was known to Veit von Seckendorf, the firstProtestant historian of the Lutheran Reformation. He had accessto the archives of the Saxon princes and he relied on originaldocuments for his history, but he found no traces of these earlymanuscripts and presumed them lost. He did not knowhecouldnot knowthat, probably in 1594, the sons of Paul Luther hadsold all the handwritten and printed writings of their grandfatherthat they had in their possession to Joachim Frederick, Margraveof Brandenburg.In this way, Luther's Romans manuscript came to be depositedin the library that later was known as the Royal Library of Berlinand, since 1918, as the Prussian State Library. The guardians ofthis collection never made a secret of the fact that this Luthermanuscript was among their holdings (nor did they make an extramention of it as if they regarded it as an unusual treasure), and

9 The whole story of the strange fortune of Luther's manuscript is told byFicker in the introductions to his two editions of it.10Cf. Ficker (ed. 1908), p . IX .


19/506

xx n LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANSnobody apparently showed any special interest in it. It was listedin the oldest printed catalogue of the library (1668). When, in1846, the library put up a special exhibit of Luther items by wayof observing the three-hundredth anniversary of Luther's death,the manuscript was prominently displayed.Afterward, it was placed in a showcase in the large entrance hallleading to the public reading room of the library. Although itwas properly identified as an early Luther manuscript, it did notcome to the notice of anyone able to recognize its importance.The author of the catalogue of the Latin manuscripts in the RoyalLibrary in Berlin, the librarian Valentin Rose, who, of course,listed Luther's work, frequently expressed surprise at the factthat no scholar ever came to examine it. He did not know that atthe same time he published his catalogue (1905) an extensivesearch for this very piece of writing was going on because, a fewyears earlier, a copy of it had been found in the Vatican Li-brary.As detailed studies revealed, this copy was the work of JohannAurifaber, one of Luther's several faithful famuli, to whose in-dustry in taking notes we owe much of our knowledge of the"older" Luther, particularly through part of the table talk. Itappears that, at about 1560-1570, Aurifaber was engaged by UlrichFugger to make copies of certain ones of Luther's manuscripts,including the lectures on Romans. Ulrich Fugger (+1584), thegreat-grandson of Jacob Fugger (+1469), the founder of the fa-mous banking house, and the great-nephew of Jacob Fugger theRich (+1525), who made his firm a European power, was a col-lector of rare books and manuscripts. A Protestant, he desired toinclude in his collection also originals of Luther's writings. Whenhe found that he could not acquire these, he engaged Aurifaberto furnish him copies of such of Luther's works as existed onlyin the form of manuscripts. In his will, he left his library to theelector Palatine. He himself saw to it that it was deposited in theChurch of the Holy Spirit in Heidelberg.At the end of the second stage of the Thirty Years' War, the so-called "Palatinate War," the Upper Palatinate came into the pos-session of Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria (1623). It was shortlyafter the conquest of Heidelberg by General Tilly (on September16, 1622) that Maximilian, an ardent partisan of the RomanChurch, gave the Fugger Library (then and thereafter known asBibliotheca Palatina),which with its 3,527 manuscripts was thefinest and most valuable library in Germany, to Pope GregoryXV as a token of his loyalty and esteem. The pontiff accepted theextraordinary gift and had the treasures transported across the


20/506

GENERAL INTRODUCTION XX111AlpstoRomeandordered themto beincorporatedin theVaticanLibrary.

Atthe end of thenineteenth century, PopeLeoX III madetheVatican Library freely accessibletoresearchersandscholars. Thiswasone of thereasonswhy, in 1899,Johannes Ficker, thena pro-fessorofchurch historyin theUniversityofStrassburg,aspecial-istin thehistoryofhandwritingand handwritten texts, askedafriend and former studentof his, Dr. Hermann Vopel,who hap-penedto be inRome,tosearchintheVatican Libraryforcertainexegetical worksof Melanchthon.Dr. Vopel found catalogue list-ingsof manuscripts not onlyof Melanchthon but alsoof otherReformers, including Luther.On closer examination, one of these pieces turned out to beAurifaber's copyof Luther's lecture manuscripton the letter tothe Romans. Other remarkable items were found: for example,a copyof a student's notesof Luther's lectureson The Lettertothe Hebrews.Dr. Vopel,Prof. Johannes Ficker,and the latter'sbrother, Gerhard, alsoaprofessorof church history thenatKiel,madeacopyof thegreat find.Prof. Johannes Fickerat that time began an extensive searchfor Luther's original manuscript,but he wasable to locate onlyseveral students' notebooks containing Luther's classroom dicta-tion.The Royal Libraryin Berlin replied negatively to aques-tionnairehesentto all libraries that couldbepresumedtohouseLuther manuscripts.Inthem eantime,thesignificanceof a fuller knowledgeoftheseearly worksof Luther'swasdemonstratedby thepublication(in1904)of theworkLuther undLuthertum in derersten Entwick-lung, quellenmdssig dargestellt,by Heinrich Denifle, a verylearnedbut extremely anti-Protestant Roman Catholic historian,a memberof theDominican order.He hadmade extensiveuse ofthe Vatican manuscript of Luther's lectureson Romans, chieflyin order to demonstrate that Lutherwas not so well trained intheologyas in his,Denifle's, opinionheoughttohave been.In thecourseof the heated debate that this work provoked, it becameclear thata detailed examinationof Luther's theological develop-ment, especially in connection with later Scholasticism,was ur-gently necessaryfor aproper understandingof thebeginningsofthe Reformation. Thus the need of publishing Luther's earlyexegetical lectures assumed major importance.In 1905, the existenceof Luther's original manuscript in theBerlin library was brought to the attention of Prof. NikolausMiiller.He was aprofessorof church historywho in hiscapacityas directorof the Melanchthon Housein Brettenhad come into


21/506

XXIV LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANSpossession of the text of the lectures on Galatians that Luther haddelivered in 1516. Although he had so far not contributed any-thing to the investigation of the initia Lutheri, he claimed theright of publishing the Romans manuscript as his prerogative. Itwas only under considerable difficulty and with much embarrass-ment that Professor Ficker gained access to the piece of writingfor which he had diligently searched for such a long time. Butnow he was enabled to collate the two available texts and, in1908,he finally published what he called a provisional version ofthe lectures. Only in 1938 was he able to bring out the definitiveedition which, as we stated earlier, was published as Vol. 56 ofthe Weimar Edition of Luther's Works.II . LUTHER'S EXEGESIS OF THE LETTER TO THE RO-MANS IN TH E L IGH T OF TH E HERMENEUTICAL WORKOF HIS ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL PREDECESSORSOne cannot read a single part of Luther's lectures without beingmade aware of his dependence upon the methods and traditions ofmedieval exegesis. Yet he was no mere traditionalist. He was as lit-tle interested in merely preserving what others who had gone beforehim had done as he was concerned to break up what they hadachieved. He wanted to understand the Scripture as thoroughlyand adequately as possible. That is why he used all means avail-able to him in order to accomplish a full and true interpretation:he employed the methods of traditional Biblical exegesis as wellas most recent Biblical research. He relied upon Scholasticism and,at the same time, he made thorough use of the philology of theHumanists. In the end, he overcame both Scholasticism and Hu-manism because, in the last resort, he depended for the under-standing of the Scripture upon the insights of his own deeplypene trating m ind and upon the judgments of his conscience. Thu she was to inaugurate an entirely new phase in the history of exege-sis in general and of Biblical exegesis in particular.In the lectures on Romans, all these aspects of his work as anexpositor become visible. He appears to conform to the standardsof medieval exegesis, not only in the way in which he arranges hisexposition, but also with respect to the textbooks on which he re-lies; yet, at the same time, he eagerly employs the most modernexegetical helps of his era, e.g., Reuchlin's Hebrew Dictionary,Faber's Biblical commentaries, and especially Erasmus' editionof the Greek New Testament and his "Annotations." Indeed, hecombines the purposes of Scholastic exegesis (in so far as it aimedat establishing the spiritual meaning of the Scripture) w ith those ofthe Humanists (in so far as they endeavored to make the authors


22/506

GENERA L INTRODUCTION XXVof the Biblical books speak for themselves). But he accomplishedthis "combining," not by means of an external synthesis, butthrough a profound spiritual effort that engaged all his innerpowers. The lectures on Romans prove that, because of this,Luther was on the way to a new understanding of the Bible and,in connection therewith, to a fresh hearing of the gospel, long be-fore his clash with the authorities of the Roman Church causedhim to become the leader of the Reform ation.The most characteristic device of the medieval exegetes was the"gloss." They based the interpretation of texts on the expositionof individual words and termswith the result that they tendedto lose sight of the meaning of larger passages and of the connec-tion between them. They often got stuck in details as, even today,is characteristic of many Biblical exegetes.It was customary to make two glosses, an interlinear and a mar-ginal one. The interlinear glosswas a paraphrase of the textstressing the specific meaning of the different words, the logicalconnection between them, and the interrelation of the severalparts of a sentence. The marginal gloss(which represented theoldest part of the tradition of exegetical scholarship, for it wasalready widely practiced among the Greeks) consisted of briefinterpretations of small units of the text that were written on thepage margins. Generally, they were excerpts from established andrecognized exegetical works to which amplifying or other explan-atory remarks were added by the individual exegetes.Then there was also the scholion,or scholium, which differedfrom the gloss in so far as it was an exposition of those parts of thetext which in the opinion of the exegete required an extensiveinterpretation. Nevertheless, it resembled the gloss in so far as it,too,was an exposition of small parts of the text ra ther than o5 anentire coherent passage. The medieval Biblical exegetes oftenfilled their scholia with what we would call nowadays practicalexegesis, but they also used them for controversies and argumentswith opponents and others with whom they differed.But all this describes merely the form of medieval exegeticalwork and does not touch on what was really distinctive of it. Themost telling feature of the learning of the Scholastics was that theyorientated their thinking and reasoning toauctoritasandauctori-tates,namely, the authority of the canonical Scriptures, of thecreeds and the canons, of the councils and other ecclesiasticaljudicatories, of the fathers, of tradition. In exegetical work, thisorientation manifested itself in the fact that, before proceedingto advance their own interpretations, the Schoolmen quoted andexploited certain basic works that not only constituted authority


23/506

XXVI LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANSin themselves but also represented collections of the opinions andjudgments of traditional authorities.

The basic marginal gloss on which most later ones were builtwas that of Walafrid Strabo (+849), a scholar of the school ofAlcuin. He attempted to give a universal comm entary on the Scrip-ture by interpreting it word for word, or rather sentence by sen-tence,in the light of more or less relevant extracts from the worksof the fathers, i.e., Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Ori-gen, Chrysostom, Jerome, Isidore of Seville, Cassiodorus, Alcuin,Bede, and Rabanus Maurus. This work was known as Glossa or-dinaria, and it was regarded asauctoritasspeaking for the Scrip-ture itself {lingua ipsaScripturae).11T h e Glossa ordinariawas commonly copied and later printedtogether with theGlossa interlinearisof Anselm of Laon (+11 17).This was a translation of the words and terms of the Bible intotheir inner meaning, or what Anselm regarded as such, an inter-pretation of the individual phrases of the Biblical texts not interms of philology but for the purpose and in the manner of spir-itual edification.Luther was steeped in this tradition. His early commentariesconsist of interlinear and marginal glosses and of scholia. More-over, in his comments on every passage, he refers outspokenly orby implication to the Glossa ordinariaand the Glossa interline-aris.In his first exegetical lecture course, theDictata superPsalter*ium3he was still very closely bound to this established manner ofinterpretation. Later on, he gradually freed himself from it. In-deed, from 1519 on, he abandoned it altogether. In the lectureson Romans, he exhibits a use of it that we may regard as charac-teristic of his way of doing intellectual work: under his hands, theinterlinear gloss often becomes a very succinct restatement of thewords and ideas of the apostle. For he explains the individualpassages of the letter by illuminating them through reference toits other parts. Moreover, he formulates his explanatory comm entsand paraphrases so as to exclude meanings that the apostle couldnot have had in mind when he wrote the letter.As far as Luther's marginal glosses are concerned, they are nolonger mere collectanea from the writings of the fathers, butbrief incisive comments on selected short passages or individualterms or phrases. He combines them with quotations from theScripture or with critical or commendatory remarks on the writ-ings of certain ones of the fathers (chiefly Jerome, whom he makesthe butt of many criticisms, and especially Augustine, on whom1 1Peter Lombard, IVSent, d.4 (PL 113, 17).


24/506

GENERAL INTRODUCTION XXV11he generally bestows high praise) or with references to the in-terpretations of recent scholars (mainly Faber Stapulensis andErasmus).His scholia, finally, are short or lengthy essays, sometimes of aphilological-grammatical character but mostly dealing with theo-logical ideas or with monastic or ecclesiastical practices. We shouldalso note that his language and manner of speaking, though ob-viously representative of academic convention and conforming tothe ways of the classroom, are often highly impassioned and per-sonal, certainly in what he writes in his own notebook, thoughhardly at all in what he dictates to his students on the basis ofthese notes.All this, however, does not give a complete picture of Luther'sentanglement in tradition. The Scholastic interpretation of theBible was even more complex than we have indicated so far. For,according to the Pauline saying of II Cor. 3:6: "The letter kills,but the spirit gives life," the Scripture was believed to requirenot only a literal exposition b ut also a spiritual one. In dependenceupon the hermeneutical practices of the ancient Greeks, who hadfound it difficult, for example, to take Homer literally and there-fore devised an allegorical interpretation of his poems, the exegetesof the ancient church, and particularly Origen, as Luther neverfailed to remember, had laid down rules that enabled one to readthe books of the Bible both in the literal, i.e., historical, and inthe spiritual, i.e., allegorical, sense.In the course of time, the allegorical meaning was further de-fined, and consequently the spiritual interpretation of Scripturehad to be achieved by several hermeneutical steps. ThomasAquinas defined the matter very well. He wrote:12 "God is theauthor of Holy Scripture. He has given a meaning not only to thewords but also the things they signify, so that the things signifiedin turn signify something else. First of all, the words signify things,which is the historical sense; but secondly, the things signify otherthings, and we get the spiritual sense. The latter is of three sorts:T he Old Law is allegorically interpreted in the New Law, but theinterpretation of matters affecting Christ and our obligation istropological, and that which deals with the eternal glory is theanagogical or celestial sense." These four senses constituted "rulesby which," as Guibert de Nogent (+1124) put it in a book on theconstruction of sermons,13"every page of Scripture turns as on so1 2SummaTheoL,I,q .1, 0. 10.13Quo Or dine Sermo Fieri Debet (PL 156, 25 .), as quoted by John T.McNeill in his article on "The History of Interpretation" in The Inter*pretefs Bible, Vol. I (Abingdon Press, 1950), p . 131.


25/506

XXV1U LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANSmany wheels:H istoryspeaks of things done;allegoryunderstandsone thing by another; tropology is a moral way of speaking; andanagogeis the spiritual understanding by which we are led tothings above.*' Luther quotes the following verse which expressesthe same idea, and which students of the later Middle Ages had tomemorize in school:14

"Littera gesta docet; quid credas allegoria;M oralis quid agas; sed quid speres anagoge."("The letter lets you know what happened, and allegory what youmust believe; the moral sense what you must do, and anagogewhat you may hope for.") In his lectures on Galatians where hecites this verse, he illustrates the meaning of this so-called quadrigaby reference first to Jerusalem and then to Ishmael and Isaac.Literally, Jerusalem means the "Jewish city"; allegorically, thechurch; tropologically or morally, the human soul; and anagogi-cally, heaven. Similarly, Ishmael and Isaac must be understoodliterally as the two sons of Abraham; allegorically, as the twoTestaments, or the synagogue and the church, or law and grace;tropologically, as the flesh and the spirit; and anagogically, as helland heaven.15In his excellent Luther Studies entitled The Righteousness ofGod,E. G. Rup p suggests16that this was "a more adequate frame-work than might at first sight be supposed." And then he goes onto say: "T he literal prophetic sense laid the foundation of devotionand interpretation in the mighty acts of God in his Son JesusChrist, that historical revelation . . . which is the center of theChristian proclamation. . . . T he tropological sense . . . links whatGod has done 'for us' with his saving activity 'in us/ This interpre-tation is saved from the perils of atomism and mysticism . . . by theallegorical interpretation which insists . . . that all religious ex-perience is ecclesiastical experience, that God addresses man withinthe solidarity of creation, of humanity, and of the people of God.Finally, not less necessary, the anagogical interpretation insiststhat all problems and solutions are broken and partial in time,since they relate tohom o viatorand point to strangers and pilgrimsbeyond the horizon."

Rupp himself says that "this is to dress up medieval exegesisin the jargon of modern ecumenical theology." Though the frame-work that suggests this is undoubtedly there, the actual exegetical" WA57 (Gal.), 95> 24. Cf. WA 2, 550, 21 . WAb7 (Gal.), 96, 1.1 6E. G. Rupp , The Righteousness of God,p. 134.


26/506

GENERAL INTRODUCTION XXIXpractice in medieval schools did not conform to such a full viewof man in relation to God and the church. In most cases, the in-terpre tation was artificial and stilted. Fortunately, the imaginationof individual interpreters was not given as much free play as onemight suspect. The formalism and conventionalism of medievalthought caused this exegetical method, which in its basic concep-tion left room for a great diversity of interpretations, to remainconfined to certain established patterns and themes. But evenunder these conditions, the discussion of the meaning of a Biblicalpassage often dealt with matters not mentioned at all in the text.Many parts of Luther's lectures on Rom ans show how he, too, wassteeped in these ways and to what an extent he was bound tothem simply because he used the exegetical method of theschools.But, nevertheless, his concern for an adequate interpretation ofthe Scripture was so earnest that, even though his exegetical prin-ciples and his Biblical thinking were decisively shaped by thefourfold method, he found himself inwardly pressed to attemptgoing beyond it. Indeed, we know that he finally freed himselffrom it. He came to regard the allegorical method in particular asa way of distorting the Scripture. For this reason, he was laterbitterly critical of Origen, for he considered him, not unjustly, asthe father of the allegorical exegesis of the Bible.In this connection, he learned to appreciate the work of Nicholasof Lyra (+1340), a Franciscan and a doctor of the Sorbonne inParis. Lyra was the author of a Biblical commentary which, ashe conceived of it, should serve as a supplement to the glosses ofWalafrid Strabo and Anselm of Laon: thePostillae perpetuae inVetus et Novum Testamentum.17 As a converted Jew, Lyra hadnot much use for the "spiritual" interpretation, especially in viewof the fact that he knew Hebrew and therefore was able to benefitfrom Jewish commentaries on the Old Testament, i.e., mainlyfrom the exegetical work of Rabbi Solomon Rashi (+1105). Hetherefore stressed the importance of the literal or historical in-terpretation, and he tried to tone down the theological exegesisinspired by the spiritual allegorical methods. It was on account of1 7In the Bibles published by John Froben of Basel in six-folio volumes (in

1498 and in 1509), the interlinear gloss of Anselm was printed on top ofthe text of the Vulgate. The Glossa ordinariawas placed on the left mar-gin of the page and the Postil of Nicholas of Lyra on the right margin. Onthe lower margin of the page, there appeared the corrections added toLyra'sPostil by Paul of Burgos and by Matthias Doring. This publicationthus was a veritable mine of information. We know that the young professorM. Luthe r used it thoroughly.


27/506

XXX LUTH ER: LECTURES ON R O M A N Sthis that Luther, whenhe wasolder, grew fondof Lyra,all themoresobecause,at thebeginningof hiscareeras anexegete,hehad almost detestedhim.In order to be fair, however, we should recognize that theScholastic exegetes regarded thesensus literalisor historicusasthe basisof allinterpretation.Forexample,it served themas thenormof thesensus spiritualisin so far astheydid notregarditpermissible to givea passagea spiritual meaning that was notclearly indicated in or by another part of Scripture. ThomasAquinas stated this rule in the following words:18 "Nihil subspirituali sensu continetur fide necessarium quod Scripturaperliteralem sensum alicubi m anifestenontradet.tf("Nothingcan besubsumed under the spiritual sense as necessary for the faithwhich the Scripture does not somewhere plainly hand downthroughits literal meaning.") Whatwasunusualin theworkofLyra was thathe strongly stressed the sensus literalis histori-cus.In criticizinghim forthis,theyoung L uther was dependentonthe views of the famous French Hum anist Faber Stapulensis(+1536).In theDictata super Psalterium,Faber servedas one ofhis chief au thorities . AlsothelecturesonRomans show how greatlyLutherwasindebted to him.Faber'stwochief exegetical works,the text-critical expositionof thePsalter (Quincuplex Psalterium,Gallicum, Rom anum, Hebraicum, vetus conciliatum,Paris,1509)andthecommentaryon thePauline letters (Sancti Pauli EpistolaeXIV, Paris,1512; 2d ed., 1515) servedas hischief references.It isapparent thathe hadFaber's volumes beforehim as hepreparedhisownlecture notes.He learned from theFrenchman an exegetical principle thatwastobecome most importantforhim.Inordertoavoid bothanunspiritual literal-historical exegesisand an ungrammatical alle-gorical-spiritualone,Faber proposed that theinterpreter of theBible must searchfor the literal sense that itsauthor, theHolySpirit, intended it tohave.He therefore distinguished betweentwo literal sensesormeaningsof theBiblical text,thehistorical-literal meaningand the prophetic-literal meaning.He regardedthe formerasimproper becausehejudgedit to be theproductofhuman imagination (hum ani sensu fictus),but thelatter appearedtohim aseminently proper becausehebelievedit to beinspiredbytheHoly Spirit(divino spiritu infusus).Hetherefore attemptedto interpret theBible in a literal-grammatical way but on theassumption thatit must havea prophetic-spiritual meaningor aliteral sense thatis inagreement withtheHoly Spiritor towhich1 8 Summa Theol., I,q. 1, a. 10.


28/506

GENERAL INTRODUCTION XXXIthe Holy Spirit leads the exegete (sensus literae qui cum spirituconcordat et quern spiritus sanctus monstrat).19

Thus he believed himself to be qualified for exegetical work thatwould avoid the historicism of a Lyra as well as the herm eneuticalfancifulness of the allegorists. Yet by endeavoring, on the one hand ,to establish an accurate grammatical understanding of the Hebrewand Greek texts of the Bible, he thought to do justice to Lyra'sconcern for a literal-historical interpretation; and by demonstrat-ing, on the other hand, the spiritual meaning of the Biblical writ-ings by interpreting them in their entirety in terms of the spiritualsituation out of which they were written or to which they were ad-dressed, he believed that he was carrying ou t the true inten tion ofthe allegorists which they themselves, however, in his opinionfailed to live up to. He achieved this spiritual exegesis by a Christo-centric interpretation that was determined by the ideas and at-titudes of Neoplatonic mystics from Dionysius Areopagitica andthe Victorines down to Nicholas of Cusa and Marsilio Ficino.In his lectures on The Psalms, Luther was so strongly under theinfluence of these ideas that Faber's mentality was reflected notonly in his thoughts but also in h is vocabulary. Following Faber, hemade abundant use of the contrast between spirit and letter (hehad not yet felt the impact of Augustine's treatise On the Spiritand the Letter),and he interpreted it in terms of a comprehensivedualism between things spiritual and carnal; invisible and visible;hidden and manifest; inner and outer; divine and human; heav-enly and earthly; eternal and temporal; future and present; full oftruth and filled with vanity.One can notice the same tendency also in the lectures onRom ans. However, it is there no t so predominant as in the earlierwork. T he Christocentric emphasis, however, is as strong as before.Indeed, at the very beginning of his exposition, Luther declares ina marginal gloss on Paul's appeal to "the gospel of God which hehad promised before, by the prophets, in the Holy Scriptures"(Rom.1:1-2): "There is opened up here a broad approach to theunderstanding of Holy Scripture: we must understand it in itsentirety with respect to Christ [tota de Christo sit intelligenda],especially where it is prophetic. Now it is in fact propheticthroughout, though not according to the superficial literal mean-ing of the tex t" (Gl. 5, 9 ff.).In his comment on Rom. 10:6, where Paul interprets the ques-tion of Moses, "Who shall ascend into heaven?" (Deut. 30:12) by* See his preface to thePsalterium Quincuplcx. Cf. Hahn, in Zeitschr. f. syst.TheoL, XII (1934), p. 166. Also Auguste Renaudet, Prereforme et Hu~manisme a Paris (1494-1517);sd ed. Paris, 1953, pp . 515 ft., 622 ff.


29/506

XXXU LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANSthe parenthetical remark, "T ha tis, tobring Christ down," Lu therexpressesthe same idea.He says: "Moses writes these wordsinDeut., ch. 30, and he doesnothave inmind themeaning theyhave here,but hisabundant spiritual insight enablestheapostleto bringoutthe ir inn er significance.It is as if hewantedtogiveusan impressive proof of the fact that the whole Scripture, if onecontemplates it inwardly, deals everywhere with Christ, eventhough,in so far as it is asignand ashadow,it mayoutwardlysound differently. Thisis why he says: 'Christ is the end of thelaw*(Rom.10:4);inother words: every wordof theBible pointsto Christ. That thisisreallyso, heprovesby showing that thisword here, which seems to have nothing whatever to do withChrist, nevertheless signifies Christ."20It was in connection with this Christocentrism that Lutherdeveloped the exegetical method that, though it reflected a pro-found influenceofothers uponhim, was theproductof his owninsightand theresultof hisinner strugglefor a true understand-in gof the gospel. Faber believed that the interpretation of theScripture accordingto thesensus literalis propheticus supersededthe Scholastic exegesisin termsof the fourfold meaningof theBibleand he therefore abandoned the traditional method.ButLuther handled the whole hermeneutical issuein a much morecomplicated fashion.He madetheliteral-prophetic,i.e.,Christocentric, m eaningthebasisof the fourfold meaning.21 In other words, he combinedFaber's method with thatof theScholastics.And notonly that:healso eagerly madeuse of thephilological-grammatical approachtoliteratureandparticularlyto theBible whichtheHumanistshadopened up . Th isiswhy, nextto theworksofFaber,hestudied withgreat care also thoseofReuchlinand, assoonasthey became avail-abletohim, Erasmus* contributionstoBiblical exegesis. However,muchas headmiredit, hefound himselfasdeeply dissatisfied withErasmus' scholarshipandthatof menlikehim as he waswith thatof Jerome.In hisjudgm ent, thewritingsofAugustine,and notonlythetheologicalbutalsotheexegetical ones, were much morehelpful for aproper understandingof theScripture.22The upshotof allthiswasthathedevelopedaspiritual exegesisin which he essentially combined the quadriga with Faber'smethodinsucha waythatthe literal-prophetic understandingof20WA5 6 , 4 1 4 , 1 3 .2 1Cf. on all of this the i l luminat ing ar t icle by Ge rhard Ebel ing in Z.Th.K.XXXVIII (1951) ,pp. 175 ff., on Die Anftinge von Luthers Hermen eutik(part icularlypp. 220 ff.).2 2Cf.Lu ther ' s le t tersof 1516.


30/506

GEN ERAL INTRO DUCT ION XXX11Jthe Scripture became connected and interpenetrated with a read-ing of the text in terms of the tropological or moral sense.

This method gradually assumed a more and more definite char-acter for Luther as he was engaged with the exposition of thePsalter. In the lectures on the letter to the Romans, he provedhimself to be already a master of it, although he showed himselfstill somewhat uncertain in its usedue to the syncretistic in-fluence of the several sources from which he had derived it. Wemay say that the essence he extracted from these sources was acomparatively simple rule, namely, that the Bible must be under-stood to speak literaliter spiritualiter (in terms of its spiritual-lit-eral meaning) only of Christ and at the same time tropologice(interms of the moral sense) of the believer in Christ. In other words,what is true of Christ is tru e also of his disciples; as God is and actsin Christ, so he is and acts also in those who believe in Christ. In-deed, in reading the Scripture aright, the Christian comes to knowthat God is and remains the same in everything he doesyesterday(literaliter),today{tropologice),and forever(anagogice).23One can readily understand that The Psalms could be inter-preted to speak literally of Christ and tropologically of the life ofthe Christian. Hence, it was while he was working on his lectureson The Psalms that the tropological method of interpreting theScripture became for Luther more and more the sensus primariusScripturae,2* always on the assumption, we should note, that theBible is taken to be the work of God and as such as the work of theHoly Spirit speaking of Christ. Luth er therefore always correlatedthe tropological interpretation of the Scripture in terms of whichhe saw God's word in action in every act of faith with the literal-Christological interpretation according to which he read the Bibleas the witness to God's revelation in Christ.He said:25 "Opera Dei sunt verba eius . . . idem est facere etdicere Dei19("God's works are his words . . . his doing is identicalwith his speaking"). Such a view of God required a "causative in-terpretation" of the Biblical statements about him.26 He thereforethought, for example, that the Biblical phrase "God's way f' re-ferred to the way in which God causes us to walk,27 and that bycalling God holy, it means to say that he is holy in so far as he23E .Vogelsang,DieAnfdnge vonLuthers Christologie (Be rlin , 1933),p . 63 .24W A 3 ,531,33 . Cf.Hol l , op. cit, p . 546;alsoE .Hirsch, "Initium theologiaeLutheri" (inLuther-Studien, Vo l . I I , p . 30) .2 5 ^ 3 , 1 5 4 , 7 .2 Cf.Ebeling,op. cit.,pp . 228 f.2 7 ^ ^ 3 , 5 2 9 , 33.


31/506

XXXIV LUTHER : LECTURES ON ROMANScauses men to be holy, i.e., in so far as he sanctifies them.28Ac-cording to the prophetic-literal meaning of the Scripture, Christis the righteousness of God (iustitia Dei),but, tropologically under-stood, it is faith in Christ (fides Christi) which is this righteous-ness.29This was the insight which Luther regarded as the key to theunderstanding of the Scripture. It enabled him to understand "therighteousness of God that is revealed in the gospel from faith tofaith'' (Rom.1:17).We must note that it was anexegeticalinsight.T he "righteousness of God," therefore, became a major theme ofhis Biblical exegesis. This is made especially clear in the lectureson Romans. T he topic of discourse to which Lu ther returns againand again in this work is this: God alone is righteous; before him,man is a sinner and nothing but a sinner, especially so, if in viewof his attainments, including the moral and religious ones, he re-gards himself as righteous. This self-righteousness, which is pre-sumptuousness and pride, makes man a liar before his own trueself and before God. For it prevents him from recognizing himselfas he actually is as well as from giving God the glory. But he thatlistens to the voice and verdict of his conscience and acknowledgeshimself as a sinner before God and submits to his judgment findsthat God sends grace through his justice, for he reveals himself asrighteous in order to make man righteous: he kills in order tomake alive; he breaks down man's pr ide and self-sufficiency in or-der to heal him forever; he condemns him in order to forgive h im;he humiliates him in order to accept him in grace and in order tomake him righteous.30"The righteousness of God is that righteousness by which hemakes us righteous just as the wisdom of God is that by which hemakes us wise."31III. LUTHER'S INTERPRE TATION OF TH E LETT ER T OTHE ROMANS IN THE LIGHT OF ANCIENT AND MEDI-EVAL THEOLOGYLuther gives a good summary of his basic understanding ofPaul's letter in the following statement:32"In this letter, the apos-tle does not speak against those who obviously are sinners throughand through but against those who in their own eyes are righteous28W A 3, 465, 33 .29W A 3, 466,26.30 Hol l, op. cit, p p . 188, 193 f.31W A 56, 262, 21 .32W A 56, 33, 13.


32/506

GENERA L INTRODUCTION XXXVand thus are confident that they will be saved by their works. Itis these people he tries to lead to the realization that they musttake the grace of God more seriously [inducere ad magnificandamgratiam Dei],but one cannot take it seriously unless one first ac-knowledges and takes seriously [magnificatur]the sin tha t is for-given by it. This is why some were scandalized by this when theyheard about it. They thought that the apostle was preaching thatone must do evil in order to magnify the glory of God. But, as amatter of fact, our iniquity and falsehood 'abound to his glory'when, humbling ourselves by confessing them, we glorify God forthe sake of his abundant grace as he forgives us our sins.

"But he would not be glorified in this way if we believed thatwe had no need of his grace but that we could stand before himsufficient to ourselves. He that acknowledges that he has manysins is, therefore, better than one who, like the Pharisee, acknowl-edges that he has much righteousness and no sin. For the formerglorifies God's mercy, but the latter his own righteousness."We must realize that for Luth er himself this way of taking seri-ously (or as he liked to say, "magnifying") God's grace and man'ssin constituted nothing else than the discovery of the gospel. Itenabled him to understand his own vocation as a Christian andthus it fulfilled the quest that he had begun by becom ing a monk.It also provided him with the sense of mission that he needed asa professor of Biblical theology. Indeed, h e had the feeling that hehad rediscovered the gospel for Christendom and the church, forhe was sure that both the theologians and the churchmen of histime were bound to ways of thought and practice that were leadingthem away from Christ.We do not mean to assert that, on achieving this basic under-standing of the gospel, Luthe r also felt himself called to reform thechurch. To be sure, his lecture notes on the letter to the Romansamply show to what an extent his discovery of the gospel drovehim to speak up against Scholastic theology, monastic religion, andecclesiastical ceremonialism. His faith certainly caused him to callfor changes in the teaching, order, and work of the church. How-ever, this does not imply that his new religious-theological insightset him straightway on that road to reformation which he foundhimself compelled to travel later on. What is plain is that, from thebeginning, his faith in the gospel, once it was free and clear andcertain, led him to ask all he could reach that they should repent,i.e., change their minds, for he was persuaded that, as he wrotelater in his book against Erasmus:33 "The word of God whereverit comes, comes to change and renew the world."asWA18,626,25.


33/506

XXXVI LUTH ER: LECTURES ON R O M A N SOnlyinthis sensedid thediscoveryhemadeas aBiblical theo-logian lead directlyto theworkhe had toperformas areformerof

the church.At anyrate,his newBiblical theology compelledhimto advance fundamental criticisms against Roman Catholic beliefsand practices.In adecisiveway, the Protestant Reformationwasthus theresult of his theology. However,wemust qualify thisstatementbygoingon to saythat, when Luther became involvedintheconflict withtheRoman Catholic authoritiesto theextentthat he found it impossible to submit to them,his theologicalteachings cameto bestrongly determ inedby themovesandcoun-termoves that,in thecourseoftime, weretoissuein hiscondem-nationby thepapacyand in theformationofnonpapal, Reformed,Evangelical churches.There is a remarkable document written by Luther himselfwhich has assumed special importance in this connection: hispreface to thefirst volumeof theW ittenberg Editionof his Col-lected Latin W orks(1545). Therein Luthe r reviewstheevents thatculminatednotonlyin hisrejectionatW ormsof thedemand thathe recanthisviewsbutalsoin theimpositionof the banuponhimby churchand empire. Luther engages himself in these reminis-censes in order to explain thebackground andpurpose of thewritingshepublishedin theyears 1517-1521,for these werethecontentof the first volumeof hisCollected Works.In thiscon-nection,hemakes mention alsoof theCommentaryon ThePsalms(OperationesinPsalmos),whichhe hadpublished in 1519-1520inafragmentary form, seeing that becauseof hiscontroversy withhis papal opponentshewouldbeunabletocompleteit. Hisstate-ment throws light alsoon thequestion: What importancedid hehimself attachto hislecturesonRomans?

He writes:34"Inthat year (1519),I hadmeanwhile turned oncemoreto theinterpretationof ThePsalms, relyingon thefact thatIwasbe tter schooled afterI haddealtin theclassroom withtheletterofSaint Paulto theRomansand theGalatiansandthattothe Hebrews.I hadbeen seized witha really extraordinary ardorto understand Paulin theletter to theRom ans,but until thenthere stoodin myway,notcoldnessofblood,butthisoneword,i.e.,Rom. 1:17: 'Thejusticeof God isrevealedin it.' For Ihatedthis word'thejusticeofGod* whichby the use andusageof all thedoctorsIwas taughttounderstand philosophicallyintermsofthatso-called formaloractive justice w ith whichGod isjustand pun-ishesthesinnersand theunrighteous."For, however irreproachably I livedas amonk,I felt myselfbefore God to be a sinner witha most unquiet conscience,nor34WA 54,179-187.


34/506

GENERAL INTRODUCTION XXXV11could I be confident that I had pleased him with my satisfaction. Idid not love, nay, rather I hated, this righteous God who punishedsinners, and if not with tacit blasphemy, certainly with huge mur-murings I was angry with God, saying: 'As though it really werenot enough that miserable sinners should be eternally damnedwith original sin and have all kinds of calamities laid upon themby the law of the T en Commandments, God must go and add sor-row upon sorrow and even through the gospel itself bring his jus-tice and wrath to bear ' I raged in this way with a wildly arousedand disturbed conscience, and yet I knocked importunately at Paulin this passage, thirsting more ardently to know what Paul meant.

"At last, God being merciful, as I thought about it day andnight, I noticed the context of the words, namely, 'The justice ofGod is revealed in it; as it is written, the just shall live by faith/Then and there, I began to understand the justice of God as thatby which the righteous man lives by the gift of God, namely, byfaith, and this sentence 'The justice of God is revealed in the gos-pel' to be that passive justice with which the merciful God justifiesus by faith, as it is written: 'The just lives by faith/"T his straightway made me feel as though reborn and as thoughI had entered through open gates into Paradiseitself. From thenon, the whole face of Scripture appeared different. I ran throughthe Scriptures then as memory served, and found that other wordshad the same meaning, for example: the work of God with whichhe makes us strong, the wisdom of God with which he makes uswise, the fortitude of God, the salvation of God, the glory ofGod."And now, much as I had hated the word 'justice of God' before,so much the more sweetly I extolled this word to myself now, sothat this passage in Paul was to me a real gate to Paradise. After-ward, I read Augustine On the Spirit and the Letter, where unex-pectedly I came upon the fact that I, too, interpreted the justice ofGod in a similar way: namely, as that with which God endues uswhen he justifies us. And although this was said still imperfectly,and he does not clearly explain about 'imputation/ it was gratify-ing to me that he should teach a justice of God by which we arejustified."Having become better armed by these reflections, I began tointerpret The Psalms a second time and my work would have re-sulted in a large commentary if I had not been compelled to putaside what I had begun to work on because, in the following year,I was called to appear at the Diet of Worms, which was convenedby the emperor Charles V."It seems obvious that in these comments which were meant to


35/506

XXXV111 LUT HE R: LECTURES ON ROM ANSserve as an introduction to the Commentary on The Psalms of1519-1521, the only one of his early interpretations of Biblicalbooks that he published, Luther assigns to his work on the letter tothe Romans a special significance for his discovery of the gospel inconnection with his understanding of the Pauline doctrine of jus-tification.Indeed, what L uthe r says here is borne ou t by the evidence thatis furnished by his lectures on Romans. Any reader of this workcan plainly see that, when he wrote it, he was already in possessionof that understanding of the righteousness of God of which he saysin this Preface that it set him free. What is astonishing is that, in-asmuch as the passage of Rom. 1:17 was of such signal importanceto him, he chose to give but a brief and ra the r cursory explanationof it in his lectures. However, we should note that his commentsupports in every way that view of it which he mentions in hisautobiographical statement.As a matter of fact, throughout his commentary on the letter tothe Romans, Luther appears to be in full possession of that under-standing of justification which, at the end of his life, he hailed ashaving opened to him not only the gospel but also the gates ofParadise, i.e., the way to eternal salvation. Therefore, those in-terpreters of Luther are probably correct who assume that he a-chieved the decisive insight before he took up the letter to theRomans. Luther himself gives support to their thesis, not only byhis remark (in the Preface) that after his rediscovery he readAugustine's On the Spirit and the Letter (for, in the lectures onRomans, he shows himself acquainted with this treatise), but alsoby the whole manner of theologizing that he displays in the earlierlectures on The Psalms.

It should not surprise anyone that in the Dictata super Psalmosas well as in the lectures on Romans, Luther is speaking as a manwho still is feeling his way toward a theological position of hisown. This agrees with his own interpretation of himself as onewhoscribendo et docendo profecit^ (made progress while he wroteand taught).However, we can clearly recognize in these writings the thinkerwho was to become the Reformer of the church and, as such, theone who introduced a new Biblical theology into Christendom .Here we must take notice of Luther's theological heritage. Wehave already dealt with this subject (but only in part) in connec-tion w ith the discussion of Lu ther's place in the history of exegesis.Just as he developed his ownexegeticalmethod by way of a criticaland creative dependence upon the Biblical interpreters of former35WA54 (Clemen, IV, 428).


36/506

GENERAL INTRODUCTION XXXIXages and of his own time, so he formed his own theologicalunder-standing of the Christian gospel by engaging in a searching con-versation with other theologians, old and new.His lectures on Rom ans clearly show that his theological outlookwas determined, first of a ll, by the Bible, then by Augustine, andthereafter by the mystics, particularly Bernard of Clairvaux andTauler but also by Dionysius the Areopagite, and then by theScholastics from Peter Lombard and Duns Scotus to the nominal-ists,especially Ockham, Pierre d'Ailly, and Gabriel Biel. Moreover,he proves himself to be under the theological influence of themajor exegetes on whom he reliedfrom Ambrose, Jerome, andAugustine down to Faber, Reuchlin, and Erasmus.Futhermore, there is ample evidence that his monastic life andtraining shaped his basic theological attitudes and concerns. Hismind was steeped in the liturgical tradition and discipline of theAugustinian order and his thinking about religion was formed andstimulated not only by his observation of himself and by hisanalysis of the heights and depths of his own religious life but alsoby his evaluation of the religious attitudes and practices of hisfellow monks.

Moreover, his theological schooling and particularly his trainingas a teacher had left a deep mark upon his mind. This is madeevident by his manner of reasoning (he thought about everythingin terms of contrast) and by the way in which he refers to Aristotleand Peter Lombard (on both of whom he had taught courses in1508 and 1509). However, his being at home in the writings ofAristotle, particularly theEthics, did not prevent him from beingcritical of them, just as the fact that his theological outlook was de-termined by the nominalists (to such an extent that, as Melanch-thon reports, he knew by heart long passages from d'Ailly andBid's writings) did not restrain him from expressing sharp criti-cisms of them.His writings and debates show clearly the source and norm ofall his agreements with other w riters and also of his disagreementswith them. It was the Biblethe Bible read and pondered in thelight of Paul's teaching. The following statement36of his expressesthis very pointedly (and what Luther says in it can readily beapplied to his exposition of the letter to the Romans): "Whatothers have learned from Scholastic theology is their own affair.As for me, I know and confess that I learned there nothing butignorance of sin, righteousness, baptism, and of the whole Chris-tian life. I certainly did not learn there what the power of God is,and the work of God, the grace of God, the righteousness of God,3 6 W A 12, 414, 22 (cf. Holl, op. ciU,p . 28, n .2).


37/506

Xl LUTH ER: LECTURES ON ROMA NSand what faith, hope, and love are. .. . Indeed, I lost Christ there,but now I have found him again in Paul."

Luther's knowledge of the Bible was extraordinary. He himselfsaid37 (in the Preface of 1545) that the diligent study of the Biblein which he had been engaged privately as well as publicly (i.e.,as a teacher) had enabled him to learn almost all of it by heart.Karl Holl goes so far as to say that the knowledge of the Bible thatwas at Luther's command at the time when he worked on his firstcourse on T he Psalms is comparable only to that of the best Bibli-cists of antiquity, namely, Tertullian and Origen. Howsoever thismay be, nobody is likely to deny that Luther's way of interpretingthe letter to the Romans through other books of the Scripture con-stitutes a remarkable feat of exegesis. W hat is especially noteworthyin this is his reliance on The Psalms. He knew them intimatelynot only because monastic devotions and worship services werebased on them but also because, from the beginning of his career,he had made a special study of them. In the lectures on Romans,we can observe how he tended to read the Psalter with the eyes ofPaul and how he interpreted Paul through the piety of ThePsalms. The themes, therefore, that he takes up again and againare God's dealing with man in righteousness and mercy and man'sstanding before God knowing himself as sinner or as one forgiven.A characteristic feature of Luther's u$e of the Bible, whichcomes to the fore especially in the lectures on Romans, is that hefrequently introduces special themes which certain Biblical pas-sages suggested to him. These themes continued to govern histhink ing throughout his life. We imagine that these passages struckhis fancy perhaps because they state a truth through a contrast orbecause they sharply illuminate the condition of man. (Luther wasa keen observer of the human scene. He was able to see in somesingle act of an individual something that impressed him as typicalof all men. It was for this reason that he was fond of proverbs andthat he liked to quote them.) Thus, for example, his thoughtsfrequently turned to I Sam. 2:6-7: "The Lord kills and makesalive; he brings down to hell and brings back again. The Lordmakes poor and makes rich; he humbles and he exalts." As Lu therread these words, they spoke of the crucified and risen Christ andof the Christian's dying and rising with Christ, and he thereforeinterpreted them in the following way: "It is God's nature firstto destroy and to turn to nothing whatever is in us before he givesus his own."38Another way in which he liked to describe God's dealing with37 WA 54 ( C l e m e n , I V , 426 ) .38 WA 56 , 375 , 18; 193 , 10; 45O, 19.


38/506

GENERAL INTRODUCTION xlimen was through the assertion that "God does a strange work inorder to perform a work that is properly his own/'39 Also, thisthought was derived from a Biblical passage, namely, Isa. 28:21:'Tor the Lord shall stand up as in the mountain of divisions; heshall be angry as in the valley which is in Gibeon, that he may dohis work, his strange work; that he may perform his proper workhis work is strange to him."That Luther could find major theological themes expressed inthese and many other Biblical passages was a result of his closeacquaintance with the books of the Bible. His mind was so filledwith the Bible that Biblical words formed his thoughts and thathe could not help expressing his own thoughts through Biblicalwords.Thus it could happen that he turned Biblical phrases intostatements of significant theological themes by taking them out ofcontext. This explains, for example, why, in the lectures onRomans, he quotes several times40 from S. of Sol. 8:6: "Love isstrong as death, jealousy as hard as hell." These words are part ofa sentence that, as it is rendered in the Vulgate, is almost unin-telligible (at least to us): "Put me as a seal upon thy heart, as aseal upon thy arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy [emulatio]as hard as hell; the lamps thereof are fire and flames." We mustassume that the phrase "Love is strong as dea th," etc., had fasteneditself upon Luther's mind as he memorized the Bible and thensuggested itself to him in all kinds of connections. We can make asimilar observation with respect to many other Biblical sayings,for exam ple, Lev. 26:36: "T he sound of a rustling leaf shall terrifythem." Luther quotes this only once in these lectures,41 but laterin his career it became for him a telling description of the terrifiedconscience.We point to these examples in order to indicate how Luther'sthinking was enlivened by the Bible. They seem to show that hewas arbitrary in his way of using it. But it would be a great mistaketo think that he was. The lectures on Romans prove with whatthoroughness he pondered and interpreted the Biblical books andwith how great an effort he endeavored to understand what theapostle had had in mind in every word and sentence he wrote. Inorder to accomplish such an exact understanding, Luther availedhimself,as we have seen, of every exegetical tool accessible to him.He used with great eagerness the commentaries of the Human-ists. But much as he appreciated their philological and lexico-39W A 56, 376, 8.40W A 56, 359, 29;388 , 13 ; 491,1.41WA 56 , 410 ,*8 .


39/506

xlii LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANSgraphic work, he regarded their theological exposition of the Bibleas inadequate. In these lectures, he frequently quotes Faber and(beginning with the ninth chapter) Erasmus, but he scarcely everproves himself to be dependent on them for theological ideas,certainly only slightly on Faber but not at all on Erasmus. In aletter to his friend Spalatin, written on October 16, 151642 (i.e.,at the time when he had just completed the course on the letter tothe Romans), he plainly states the reasons for his dissatisfactionwith Erasmus: that he was incapable of grasping what Paul wasthinking about. Luther complains that Erasmus applied to theobservance of ceremonial laws what the apostle writes about therighteousness of works, or the righteousness of the law, orself-righteousness, and that he was unable to comprehend that Pauldid not think as Aristotle did, especially about the relation be-tween being and doing. Luther is sure that Paul did not teach asAristotle did that men become righteous by doing righteous deeds,bu t he is persuaded that the basic assumption the apostle made wasthat by being or becoming righteous, men find themselves able toperform righteous acts. Luther also writes43 that Erasmus did notunderstand what in Rom., ch. 5, Paul means by original sin, andhe attributes this failure to the fact that Erasmus had apparentlynot read Augustine's anti-Pelagian writings and especially thetreatise On the Spirit and the Letter. In this connection, Luthersays: "In the exposition of Scripture, I put Jerome as far behindAugustine as Erasmus puts Augustine behind Je rom e/'This judgm ent is certainly borne out by the iecture notes on theletter to the Romans. Luther there refers directly to Jerome twelvetimes but to Augustine more often than one hundred times, in-deed, more often than to any other author. Moreover, Augustineis frequently quoted at considerable length. Luther shows himselfacquainted with almost the whole body of Augustine's work(though it is surprising that he does not useOn PredestinationandOn the Gift of Perseverance),but in these lectures he dependsparticularly on the anti-Pelagian writings. He naturally cites mostfrequently Augustine'sExposition of Certain Them es of the Letterto the Romans (Expositio quarundam propositionum ex ep. adRomanos), the books Against Julian and, particularly, On theSpirit and the Letter (he quotes this work twenty-seven times, ap-parently from memory). The references Luther makes to Cyprianand Chrysostom are taken from Augustine. Melanchthon, there-fore,was certainly correct when he said of Lu ther:44 "He frequently4 2WA,Br1,70,4.4 3Ibid., 70 , 17.4 4 Ot t o S c h e e l , Dok., zd e d . , N r . 532 , p p . 199 , 40 .


40/506

GENERAL INTRODUCTION xliilread all the writings of Augustine and had them firmly in mind."When Luther began his lectures on the letter to the Romans,he had just become acquainted with certain of the anti-Pelagianwritings of Augustine, and especially with On the Spirit and theLetter.***Augustine was authoritative for h im because of his Paul-inism. Luther regarded him as the one church father who hadunderstood the apostle correctly and who therefore interpreted thegospel in terms of what he had learned from Paul. However, inorder to understand Luther properly, we must note that he heldAugustine in such high esteem not only because he enabled himto comprehend Paul but chiefly because Luther judged that Au-gustine was a true Paulinist. In other words, Luther himself wasprimarily a Paulinist and only secondarily an Augustinian. Hefelt that Augustine was his ally in his fight against the Pelagiantendencies of Scholasticism, but he did not hesitate to go againsthim if he was sure that Augustine, too, did not do full justice tothe gospel, as, for example, in his teaching on love.Indeed, we may say that although Luther generally agreed withAugustine over against the Scholastics in so far as they did notseem to him to take full account of human perversity and evil,he nevertheless felt that Augustine did not reach the profundityof Paul's understanding of the situation of men before God.45Over against the Scholastic-Aristotelian teaching (i.e., that ofthe Occamists, and especially that of Gabriel Biel) that sin con-sists of single acts of wrongdoing, he understood sin (as Augustinedid) as the basic proneness toward evil that determines man'swhole being in such a way that every single sin must be seenas amanifestation of sinful human nature, i.e., of original sin. Lutherand Augustine apparently also agree in interpreting the nature ofsin as pride (superbia). Both say that pride is the cause of man'sdisobedience of God's commandments. But here we must observethat although Augustine only rarely advances this pointed inter-pretation, and then generally in order to identify sin with evildesiring or coveting (concupiscentia),which manifest themselvesin lust or in the longing for earthly happiness, Luther consistentlydefines sin as defiance and self-righteousness, i.e., as that presump-tuousness which is inspired by man's tendency to seek himselfin everything.46

The same difference is apparent also in the conception of sal-4 4 a I n 1518, Luther published an edition of Augustine's Be spiritu et litcra.In the Introduction he praises Augustine as the best source of Christianlearning next to the Bible. Cf. Ficker (ed. 1908), p . LX XVIII.45 Cf. Hamel II, 1 ff.**Ibid.,U914 f.


41/506

xliv LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANSvation: Luther criticized the Scholastics for believing that originalsin and actual sins are canceled and annulled by sacramentalgrace; for he was of the conviction that sin is forgiven by God, inthe sense that God does not count it, and that, in so far as it isforgiven, it is not annulled; rather, it remains, except in so far asthe grace of forgiveness of which man will continue to be in needcommences a healing that will be completed after death and there-fore can be apprehended in this life only by hope. Augustine oc-cupied a position between the Scholastics and Luther. He was ofthe persuasion that although the guilt and punishment of sin areforgiven, concupiscence remains not as sin bu t as the spur that caninduce new sin. In regard to this last point, Luther found it im-possible to go along with Augustine. In his judgment, concupi-scence was basically selfishness and hence sinitself, and not onlythe spur to sinning or the material of sin.Luther could not help viewing man, i.e., the Christian man, assimultaneously sinful and righteous, a sinner in fact and a right-eous man in hope, i.e., as a repentant sinner or as a forgivensinner.This bold doctrine of the Christian as simul peccator ac iustuscannot be found in Augustine's writings. He could go only so faras to say that the Christian is "partly" (partim) righteous and"partly" sinful.47To be sure, we must not exaggerate Luther's uniqueness. In-deed, we must be ready to admit that also in this teaching, whichreflects so characteristically his interpretation of the nature of theChristian life, he was under the influence of Augustine. This ismost obvious in the assertion, which in the lectures on Romanshe makes again and again, that man, though actually a sinner, isnevertheless righteous because God, the good Samaritan, haspromised him health and has already begun to heal him, or be-cause God accepts him inasmuch as he has proved himself beforeHim. Nevertheless, the basic teaching that Luther here advancedwas a doctrine of his own. Its substance was this: the Christianis sinful and righteous at the same time because he has the right-eousness of ChristChrist's righteousness "covers" him and is"imputed" to him. He is forgiven "because of Christ" ("propterChristum")and he has a "foreign" righteousness that comes to h imfrom without.For example, Luther writes:48 "The saints know that there issin in them but that it is covered and not counted because ofChrist [propter Christum]} and . . . they . . give testimony of47WA 56, 269 fL; 349 ff.; 441 ff.^sWA 56, 8o,2.


42/506

GENERAL INTRODUCTIONthe fact that all their good is outside of them in Christ who isnevertheless in them through faith. . .. We are his Kingdom, andthe beauty that is in us is not ours but his, and he covers ourhideousness with it." And in interpreting the passage, "I myselfwith the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law ofsin" (Rom. 7:25), he writes:49 "Notice that it is one and the sameman who serves both the law of God and the law of sin, that he isat the same time righteous and one who sins. . . . Notice, then,what I stated before: The saints are at the same time sinnerswhile they are righteous; they are righteous because they believein Christ whoserighteousnesscovers them and is imputed to them,but they are sinners because they do not fulfill the law and arenot without concupiscence. Th ey are like sick people in the care ofa physician: they are really sick bu t healthy only in hope and in sofar as they begin to be better, o r rather , are being healed; i.e., theywill become healthy. Nothing could be so harmful to them as thepresumption that they were in fact healthy, for it would cause abad relapse."Passages of this sort prove to what an extent Luther's doctrineof justification was distinctly his own. It was different from Au-gustine on account of the emphasis, on the one hand, on the weightof human sin, which remains even though the sinner is forgiven,and, on the other hand, on the wonder of divine righteousness,which imputes to the sinner the righteousness of Christ. Never-theless, Luther cites Augustine at great length and with approvalin the context of these very sentences which state points that can-not be found in Augustine's writings. When in his thinking onPaul's teaching he wasin fact led to go beyond Augustine, he felthimself largely in agreement with him.

And when he was aware that he wasin fundam ental disagree-ment with Augustine, he plainly hesitated to say so directly. Thisis all the more remarkable because ordinarily he expressed him-self forcefully and even vehemently when he differed with othersabout important doctrines.This can be illustrated in connection with his discussion on thecommandment of love in the lectures on Romans. Here he sharplydiffered from Augustine. For he rejected the notion that there isan order of love(caritas ordinata)in which self-love has a rightfulplace. He also knew that the Scholastics were following Augus-tine's authority in so far as they based their entire interpretationof love on this notion of "ordered love." He discusses the wholeissue in the following manner: He cites Gregory the Great in sup-port of his own view that Christian love (caritas)is never self-49WA56,347,2.


43/506

xlvi LUTHER: LECTURES ONROMANSlove and then goes ontosay:50 "But Gregory's statement and alsoour own appear to beinconflict withacertain well-known defini-tionofthe different waysofloving and their order. For, referringto Blessed Augustine, also,theMasterofthe Sentences adducesthe following definition: 'We must first love God and then oursoul, after that the soulofthe neighbor, and finallyourbody.'Ordered love, therefore, b

luther - lectures on romans

Documents