ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT There is now therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh. For the law of the spirit of life, in Christ Jesus, has delivered me from the law of sin and of death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and of sin, has condemned sin in the flesh,1 that the justification of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. (Rom. 8:1-4.)
Where is free will now?2 Where are those who try to make out that from our natural powers we can actually love God above all things? If only I said that we cannot fulfill the commandments, I should be subject to severe criticism. But here it is the apostle who says that it was impossible for the law to condemn sin, yes, that it was weak because of the flesh. This means, as I have repeatedly
1 Luther's interlinear gloss reads as follows (WA 56, 74, 14 ff.): "For what, when it was to liberate from the law of the members, but instead was weak, the law could not do, namely, that it was to condemn and take away sin but instead increased it, in that, because it could not do it, the law itself was weak through the flesh, because it was not fulfilled. It can be strong only by the spirit of faith which is able to do what the law cannot do and thereby the law is made strong and established in its validity, according to the third chapter, above [Rom. 3:31]: 'We establish the law through faith':
God sending his own Son by the incarnation in the likeness of sinful flesh, because he was not sinful flesh but, nevertheless, apart from sin, in all respects like us, as the serpent of brass in Num. 21:8-9 symbolizes, and of sin, i.e., through the punishment of sin which he bore for us, i.e., by the merit of his sin which was not in his flesh but which he took upon himself as he bore the punishment in his flesh, he condemned, i.e., he killed and destroyed sin, i.e., the tinder and sinful desire (concupiscence) in the flesh, that is to say: in our flesh."
2 Cf. Luther's remarks on Rom. 4:7 ("O Sawtheologen!").
LUTHER.* LECTURES ON ROMANS said above, that if we rely upon ourselves, we simply cannot fulfill the law and that it is no use to say that we can fulfill the law according to the substance of the deed but not according to the intention of the lawgiver, as if we could really produce from ourselves the willingness and ability to fulfill the law, but not in the way in which God wants it fulfilled, namely, in grace. If this is so, grace is useful, to be sure, but not necessary, and then also we do not carry a defect in our nature because of the sin of Adam but are sound in our natural powers. Thus philosophy stinks in our nostrils, as if reason could plead at all times for the best,8 and we tell tall tales about the law of nature.
Now it is true that everyone knows the law of nature and that reason pleads for the best. But what best? It pleads for that which is best, not according to God's standards, but according to ours, in other words: it pleads for an evil kind of good. For it seeks itself and its own in all things but not in God. Faith alone does this in love.
Hence, all knowledge and virtue and whatever good we desire and search for in reliance upon our natural possibilities will turn out to be evil kinds of good, because they are not measured according to God's standard but according to that of the creature, i.e., according to our selfish ends. For how can one refer anything to God if one does not love him above everything else? And how can one love him if one does not know him? How can man know him if, by fault of the first sin, he is bound to darkness in all his thinking and feeling? So then, unless faith enlightens him and love sets him free, man cannot will or have or do anything good— he can do only evil even in case he does good.
It is said that human nature has a general notion of knowing and willing good, but that it goes wrong in particulars.4 It would be better to say that it knows and wills the good in particular things, but in general neither knows nor wills the good. This is so because it knows only its own good or what is good, honorable, and useful for itself, but not what is good for God and for others.
Therefore it knows and wills mainly a good that is a particular good, indeed, that is good only for the individual self. And this is in agreement with the Scripture,5 which describes man as curved
3 Cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nicom. (ed. Bekker, I, 1102b, 15 f.).
4 Luther has in mind the doctrine of synteresis and conscience. Cf. Biel, II Sent., d. 39, q. un., a. 1, not. 3E and a. 3, dub. 1; Trutvetter, Physics VIII,
Tract. 1, c. 2, De potentia intellectiva (synteresis, ratio, conscientia).
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT in upon himself to such an extent that he bends not only physical but also spiritual goods toward himself, seeking himself in all things.
Now this curvedness is natural; it is a natural defect and a natural evil. Hence, man gets no help from the powers of his nature, but he is in need of some more effective help from the outside. And this is love. Without it he constantly sins against the commandment: "You shall not covet," i.e., you shall not bend anything toward yourself or seek anything for yourself, but all your life, thought, and action shall be directed to God alone. Then he will know the good universally together with all particular goods, and he will judge everything (I Cor. 6:2).
In this sense, the commandment is impossible for us.
Hence, Blessed Augustine says in Chapter 16 of his book On Grace and Free Will:6 "He commands what we cannot do in order that we should know what we shall ask of him. And this is faith which obtains by prayer what the law commands."
Some think very highly of the light of nature and compare it to the light of grace,7 but in vain, for it is darkness and the opposite of grace. This is why Job and Jeremiah curse it,8 saying that it is an evil day and a very bad sight. For this light rose immediately after sin, as it is written: "And their eyes were opened" (Gen. 3:7)
For grace sets before itself no other object than God to whom it is moved and directs itself; it sees him alone; it seeks him alone and moves toward him in all things, and everything else it sees in between itself and God it passes by as if it did not see it, and simply turns to God. This is what it means to have a "right heart"
(Ps. 7:10; 78:37) and a "right spirit" (Ps. 51:10).
Nature, on the other hand, sets before itself no other object than the self, to which it is moved and directs itself; it sees and seeks only itself and aims at itself in everything; everything else, even God himself, it bypasses as if it did not see it, and turns to itself. This is what it means to have a "perverse" and "wicked" heart (Ps. 101:4; Prov. 27:21).
As grace puts God in the place of everything else it sees, also in its own, and prefers him to itself, and seeks only what is God's
6 Augustine, De gratia et lib. arb., 16, 32: "Ideo iubet aliqua, quae non possumus, noverimus, quid ab Mo petere debeamus. Ipso est enim fides, quae orando impetrat, quod lex imperat."
7 Cf. Luther's exposition of Rom. 4:7. Duns Scotus, III Sent., d. 14, q. 2, n.
4; Gabriel Biel, III Sent., d. 14, q. un., a. 2L.
8 Cf. Job, chs. 31 ff.; Jer. 10:14.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS and not its own, so nature, by contrast, puts itself in the place of everything, and even in the place of God, and seeks only its own and not what is God's. Thus it idolizes and absolutizes itself.9 Then it turns God into an idol for itself, and the truth of God into a lie, and finally also all God's creatures and gifts. Grace is not content unless it sees God in and above all it sees, and it rejoices in wanting and wishing everything to have life and being in the glory of God. But nature, by contrast, regards everything it sees as worthless unless it serves to its advantage and makes itself available to it.
It values only what it can use for its own enjoyment, advantage, and benefit.
This is spiritual whoring and wickedness and curvedness of the worst sort. One should therefore not call this kind of prudence light but darkness, and more correctly so, unless one wants to call it light because it observes and knows by reason and the senses.
But in so far as it tends to turn all knowledge to itself, it is darkness in the full sense of the word. By its very nature it cannot help bending everything to itself. For it cannot love God and his law, as the apostle says here.
Here is the sign by which one can recognize all this: Nature is happy and content as long as it has everything it wants, but if this is not so, it is disturbed and disquieted. Not so grace. It remains neutral and loves and observes in everything only God's will, and it is content with itself and everyone else, no matter what may or does happen. Whatever God does and wills, it too wills, and it is glad in it regardless of how bitter it is. Indeed, it praises and blesses God at all times, also when something very troublesome and sad befalls it. It knows how to rejoice in sadness and to be sad in joy. The flesh cannot possibly do this in reliance upon its own powers.
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh. (Rom. 8:3.) Blessed Augustine comments on this text:10 "The law was weak in so far as it did not fulfill what it commanded, not by its own fault, but 'through the flesh/ i.e., through men who, by seeking earthly possessions, did not love the righteousness of the law but preferred temporal advantages to it."
Now this happens when one observes the law for fear of punishment or from love of advantage, without having one's heart and mind in it, in other words: when one observes the law not because
God so commanded and willed but because it promises something good and threatens with something evil.
9 "Ideo idolum est ipsa sibi primum et maximum/'
10 Augustine, Propos. ex ep. ad Rom., 48.
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT Only an utterly unrestrained readiness to love11 performs an act or refrains from it, because this is God's good pleasure, without regard for any other good or without any fear for anything evil, apart from God's wanting it so. Nature is not capable of this, but only grace is, namely, the grace that is given by faith in Christ through the Holy Spirit.
The phrase "the law was weak" must be referred to the heart and the inner disposition rather than to outward action. For people observed the law outwardly by their action, but inwardly in their heart they hated it, according to the saying of the psalm:
"That speak peace with their neighbor but have mischief in their hearts'* (Ps. 28:3), in other words: in themselves inwardly they cannot be as good as they outwardly appear to be.
Because he was aware of this, the apostle asserted so bluntly in the second chapter of this letter, as I have already pointed out, that those who taught that one must not steal were themselves thieves, etc. He knew with certainty that without grace they would not fulfill in their will what they taught by word of mouth and what they showed forth outwardly in their actions, in view of the fact that without grace all belong equally to that "mass of perdition"12 of which it is written in Gen. 8:21: "The imagination and thought of man's heart are prone to evil from his youth" (and in no way to the good which the law commands).
God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and of sin, has condemned sin in the flesh. (Rom. 8:3.) Blessed Augustine comments on this passage:13 "This is what our Lord's death accomplished: We no longer fear death and therefore we do not seek temporal goods nor fear temporal evils.
This was the aim of the wisdom of the flesh on account of which the commandments of the law could not be fulfilled. But the Christian who is rid of this wisdom can fulfill the righteousness of the law, for he does not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."
These words clearly show that we must take "sin" and "the wisdom of the flesh" to mean the same. For "to condemn sin" (Blessed
Augustine says) is the same as "to be rid of the wisdom of the flesh." A man who is thus freed no longer fears death, nor does he love life. And because he loves only God, he fulfills the law. For 1:tEllwein (p. 281) translates "Solus amor voluntatis libcrrimus?': "Nur der vollkommen freiwillige Liebeswille"
12 Cf. Augustine, De gratia et pecc. orig., 2, 29, 34.
!3 Augustine, Propos. ex ep. ad Rom., 48.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS a man who for God's sake does not fear death, and who does not love life more than God and thus hates himself in his heart, really loves God above everything. He that loves God more than himself certainly loves God above everything, for man loves nothing so much as himself. But this is an impossibility for the flesh; for it is the way of the wisdom of the flesh that man loves himself above everything, even above God.
If it were possible for the flesh to love God, "Christ died in vain"
(Gal. 2:21), for then it would be whole and it would be a friend of God and the apostle would be mistaken in saying: "The wisdom of the flesh is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be"
(Rom. 8:7). Thus we can once more refute the Scholastics who say that from purely natural powers the will can produce an act of the true love of God.14 Moreover, it is an invalid argument of theirs to say that whatever the intellect can dictate as something that must be willed and done the will can will, and that therefore, in case the intellect dictates that God must be loved above everything, the will can will this.15 We reply to this as follows: The conclusion is not correct nor is that which is subsumed under it. The conclusion should be this: Therefore, as it was told, the will can will that God must be loved above everything. But it does not follow from this that it is able to love God above everything, but it wills only with a feeble motive that this should be done, i.e., there is available only a tiny bit of that will that would be needed in order that what was commanded actually be done.
If this were not so, it would be meaningless to say, as everybody does, that the law was given in order to humiliate the proud who presumptuously rely on their own power to do good.
How, then, did Christ "condemn sin because of sin" or how did he bring it about by his death that we do not need to fear death and how did he rid men of "the wisdom of the flesh*? Only by the merit of his death! For it was by it that he earned for us the gift of the spirit and our liberation from "the wisdom of the flesh."
It is the spirit that kills "the wisdom of the flesh" and quickens the inner man and enables us to despise death and to give up life and to love God above everything, in accordance with the saying of The Song of Solomon: "For love is strong as death and jealousy as hard as hell" (S. of Sol. 8:6). (The Spirit also brings it about 14 "Voluntatem posse elicere actum dilectionis Dei super omnia ex purls naturalibus."
15 In part lit., according to Ockham I Sent., d. 1, q. 2, concL 1. Cf. Biel, II Sent., d. 28, q. un., a. 2, concl. 1 and 2; Pierre d'Ailly, I Sent., q. 2, a. 2 f. Cf. also Lyra's use of the term "dictamen rationis, dictamen legis naturalis"
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT that the concupiscence that is in us is condemned. For it is not our achievement but the gift of God that we hate ourselves and condemn all coveting and choose love. This is why the apostle says that it is God who has condemned and destroyed sin in our flesh.
And he enables us to destroy it through faith in Christ by his Spirit that is shed abroad in our hearts [Rom. 5:5].) Take note also of the fact that he does not say: "And on account of the sin in the flesh he condemned the sin in the flesh"
(but rather, "on account of sin he condemned the sin in the flesh"), for he makes a distinction between sin and the sin in the flesh.
For the sin by which the sin in the flesh is condemned is that punishment of sin which Christ took upon himself in his flesh.
His flesh was without sin, yet it bore the likeness of the sin of the flesh for the sake of the punishment of sin. Thus it was that on account of the sin of him in whose flesh there was no sin, the sin which is in the flesh of everyone else was condemned.
For what the law could not do. (Rom. 8:3.) The apostle says, "what the law could not do," rather than, "what we could not do," even though this inability is ours alone because we were too weak and powerless to fulfill the law. He does this because it is his way of speaking and because the occasion of his writing to the Romans demanded it. For he argues primarily against those who, relying on their natural powers, thought that, in order to obtain righteousness and good works, they were in need of no other help than the knowledge of the law, as the Jews did and as all who are proud do to this day. Out of the same haughtiness they all can say the words of Ex. 20:19: "Speak thou with us and we will hear" and of Ex. 19:8: "All that the Lord has spoken, we shall do." They all think that the law suffices them, and they are the more culpable in their error the more they think that the law can be fulfilled merely by outward deeds.
It is this empty confidence in the law and in their knowledge of it which the apostle reproves by saying that the law could not possibly accomplish what in their presumptuousness they assumed it could, namely, the abolition of sin and the attainment of righteousness. But this is not the fault of the law but of their foolish and empty regard for and trust in the law. For in itself the law is very good. It is just as with a sick man who wants to drink some wine because he is of the foolish opinion that he will thus be cured.
When then the physician, not meaning to say anything at all against wine, tells him: "The wine cannot possibly cure you; it will only make you sicker," he does not put any blame on the wine but only on his foolish patient. For he needs some other kind
LUTHER! LECTURES ON ROMANS of remedy in order to get well so that he can drink wine. So also our corrupted nature is in need of another medicine than the law, in order to become whole so that it can fulfill the law.
For they that are according to the flesh, mind the things that are of the flesh; but they that are according to the spirit, mind the things that are of the spirit. For the wisdom of the flesh is death; but the wisdom of the spirit is life and peace.16 Because the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy of God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be. And they who are in the flesh cannot please
God. But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body indeed is dead, because of sin; but the spirit lives, because of justification.
And if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies, because of his Spirit that dwells in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you shall die; but if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live,
It would be more appropriate to use uniformly throughout this chapter of the letter before us the word "prudence" rather than
"wisdom" (as also Augustine and the Greek text have it).17 All agree that prudence is directed to what one must do, but wisdom to what one must think about. And the apostle speaks here in the moral meaning and about what one must do.
Now, one practices prudence by choosing the good and by seeking to avoid evil. This is something twofold; therefore he describes here a twofold kind of prudence.
16 Luther's marginal gloss reads as follows (WA 56, 75, 21 ff.): "Gal. 5:19 ff.:
'Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife/ etc. 'But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace,' etc. We should note that 'spirit' is here taken to mean the inner man, as the contrast between flesh and spirit shows.
And farther down we read: 'The Spirit is life because of righteousness'
[Rom. 8:10]. But the spirit, i.e., the inner man, must have the Holy Spirit.
One may therefore regard these fruits of the spirit as fruits of the Holy Spirit. Hence it is more appropriate to understand by 'spirit' the inner man as if it were a good tree that brings forth good fruit and by 'flesh' a corrupt tree that brings forth evil fruit [Matt. 7:17]. It is also more appropriate to say that the Holy Spirit creates the good tree rather than that it is a good tree by itself."
17 Augustine, Propos. ex ep. ad Rom., 49. Faber reads Rom. 8:7: "sapientia"
(wisdom) for "prudentia" ("prudence"). The distinction was of some importance to the Scholastics. Cf. Biel, Prolog. Sent., q. 12, a. 2, dub. 1, where reference is made to Aristotle, Elh. Nicom., VI, 3 ff.
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT The "prudence of the flesh" chooses what is to selfish advantage and it avoids what is harmful to the self. Moreover, it rejects the common good and chooses what harms the common spirit. This is the prudence that directs the flesh, i.e., concupiscence and selfwill. It enjoys only itself and uses everyone else, even God; it seeks itself and its own interests in everything: it brings it about that man is finally and ultimately concerned only for himself. This is the idolatry that determines all he does, feels, undertakes, thinks, and speaks. Good is only what is good for him and bad only what is bad for him.
In the Scriptures, this curvedness, depravity, and wickedness are exposed many times under the names of fornication and idolatry. As we have said in connection with the sixth chapter of this letter, they are in the hidden depths of our nature, indeed, they are nature itself in so far as it is wounded and in ferment through and through—and this to such an extent that, without grace, it is not only incurable but also wholly unrecognizable. In order that we may recognize it more clearly, let us designate the stages of its range in terms of the objects of its concern, the objects of its
"inordinate enjoyment/' as the saying goes.18
External goods riches parents relatives power friends children honors family wife Physical goods: health strength beauty
Goods of the soul: talent memory intelligence prudence ani skills { £ £ > virtues ry Corporal, i.e., human, wisdom such as Intellectual wisdom in the knowledge of and teries of respec, t o V m y,
Affectional grace in righteousness, devotions, the gifts of the God in so far as he is known19 in his divine attributes is On this term, cf. Ockham, I Sent, d. l, a. 4C; Biel, I Sent, d. 1, q. 4, a. 2, concl 1.
W'Deus affirmative"; cf. perhaps Dionysius Areopagita, De coelest. hierarch., 2, 3.
LUTHER! LECTURES ON ROMANS All this, God has given to us men, clothing us, as it were, in a garment of many folds. And the "prudence of the flesh" clings to all these gifts. To be sure, not all men range over all of them, nor are all equally interested in the same one of them, but one is more, and another less, versed in one and the same; and one in several of them, and the other in only a few. Man, I say, turns all of them to himself, seeks his own good in them, and horribly makes an idol out of them. This he puts in place of the true God, in so far as he does not refer them to God, and he is unhappy when he is deprived of them. Hence, one cannot take any away from him against'his will.
So there are some who refuse to give up even that of the lowest rank, say, riches; others are ready to part from riches but are unwilling to give up honor, and if they are, they refuse to part from children, parents, friends, etc.; but if they do renounce them, then they refuse to surrender health, beauty, or life—and so one could go on and notice the many very tight traps in which men are caught and their endless searchings. Human nature cannot disentangle itself from the smallest of these traps, and much less from all or from the larger ones. But grace will quickly set it free, as the Scripture says: "He will pluck my feet out of the snare"
(Ps. 25:15). These human possibilities are "the snare of the fowler" (Ps. 91:3), not as if they turned into snares because this is their nature (for they were created good), but they become so by fault of the prudence of the flesh.
The "prudence of the spirit" chooses the common good and seeks to avoid what can harm the common life. It rejects self-interest and chooses what is disadvantageous to the self. For it directs the love that "seeks not its own" (I Cor. 13:5) but that which belongs to God and all his creatures. It regards as good only what is good to God and everyone and as evil what is evil to God and everyone. For its concern is only God as he is in himself and it is interested in anything only in relation to God.20 Hence, it enjoys everything in God and with God.
How this can be, can easily be stated in words, but only the Holy Spirit can actually bring it about and only one who experienced it has any knowledge of it. It is the Spirit that causes so many things suddenly to disappear and to vanish into nothingness and to be regarded as worthless by the soul. And the soul that has inwardly turned away from everything seeks with Mary only the one thing needful (Luke 10:38). But as Martha passes through all this
20 "Quia non habet obiectum aliud nisi Deum negative et omnia cum Deo negative*'
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT and struggles with it, she is troubled about many things, "forgetting the things that are behind and stretching forward to the things that are before" (Phil. 3:13).
Now there are men who have renounced riches and profess poverty: their soul has really gotten out of this trap. But lo and behold, it falls into a worse one, namely, into self-will in connection with devotions or right living or in connection with learning and study or, what is not quite so bad, it falls into vainglory and the desire to be honored, etc. Thus, much effort is required until the "prudence of the flesh," entangled as it is in so many snares, is overcome by the "prudence of the spirit" under incessant prayers and with many tears.
These are the traps which Saint Anthony saw everywhere in the world;21 he bemoaned them and said: "Who can escape them all?"
And he got the reply: "Only humility can." Now I have here enumerated eight big traps, but if one divides them into their parts, they become very many. And it is really true that, when someone has escaped the trap of wealth-seeking in one respect, say in so far as he despises money, he gets caught in it in another respect, say in so far as he longs for the ownership of land or other goods; and so it is with everything else.
So then, that which by fault of the prudence of the flesh is a snare and a stumbling block to man helps him on his way to God, thanks to the prudence of the spirit.
Hence, the apostle says: "They mind the things of the flesh," i.e., carnal goods which are objects of enjoyment. All those we have enumerated are of this kind.
The term "prudence of the flesh" refers not only to carnal pleasures but to everything this side of God that one can have in this life; the life to come, however, cannot be had in the created world but only in the Creator, and he is the good that is the concern of the prudence of the spirit.
Blessed Augustine says on this passage:22 "By 'enemy of God' we mean a man who does not obey the divine law and this because of the prudence of the flesh, i.e., because he longs for temporal goods and dreads temporal evils. According to the conventional definition, prudence is the desire for goods and the avoidance of evils." Then he quotes the words of the apostle: "The prudence of the flesh is enmity toward God" and goes on to show that "enmity"
2 1 Vitae Patrum HI, Verba Seniorum, 129 (PL 73, 785).
22 Augustine, Propos. ex ep. ad Rom., 49. Luther abbreviates Augustine's passages, interspersing his quotations with summaries and comments of his own.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS means "not to be subject to the law of God/' lest some Manichee might think that some nature originating, so to speak, in an opposite principle constitutes the enmity toward God.
"But one obeys the law of God when this prudence has been extinguished in order that it should be followed by the prudence of the spirit which prevents us from hoping for temporal goods and fearing temporal evils. It is characteristic of one and the same nature of the soul that it has prudence of the flesh in so far as it longs for 'the lower/ as well as prudence of the spirit in so far as it chooses and loves 'the higher/ Just as it is characteristic of one and the same nature of water that it congeals as it freezes and that it evaporates as it is heated. Hence, the saying: 'The prudence of the flesh is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be/ But when water as it is heated steams and boils, one can no longer call it snow."
So also the Lord says in Matt. 12:33: "Either make the tree good and its fruit good; or make the tree evil or its fruit evil," in other words: If the "prudence of the flesh/' which is an evil tree, is not changed into the "prudence of the spirit/' which is a good tree, it cannot produce good fruit even though it appears to bear good fruit. The fruit does not produce the tree but the tree the fruit.
Works and actions do not produce virtue, as Aristotle says,23 but virtues determine actions, as Christ teaches. For a second act presupposes the first one, and the prerequisite of an action is substance and power just as there is no effect without a cause.
Now temporal goods, so we must understand, are everything that is outside God whether we comprehend it with the senses or with the mind, or whether it is life or knowledge or right living, as we have said before. Similarly, we must regard as evil everything that is opposite to these goods, such as death, ignorance, sin, etc.
A man who is prudent in spirit has no fear of them, just as he has no love or special appreciation for temporal goods. But a man who is prudent in the flesh has a horrible fear of death, stupidity, sin, etc.
So then, if you feel that you dread death, instead of loving the thought of it, you can take this as a most certain sign that you are still involved in the "prudence of the flesh." Similarly, if you are scared of sin and the judgment to come and if you despair on account of your sin, this indicates that the prudence of the flesh is still alive in you. We should not dread sin and death, not because they are not to be feared and abhorred at all but for the purpose of putting the prudence of the flesh in its place by recognizing it for what it is, so that the weak may get busy freeing themselves
23 Aristotle, Eth. Nicom., Ill, 7; V, 9; V, 10.
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT from this horror and by the grace of God receive the hope of security. Those who are weak in this way are still under the law, unless they longingly turn their face toward grace that they may be torn away from their troubles.
The "prudent in spirit," however, love the will of God and hail it because they conform to it. So they are not frightened in the knowledge that by the will of God the Last Judgment will come and fill everything with horror when he displays his wrath, but they look forward to it with joy and pray that it may come soon.
What others dread with the greatest horror is for them the object of purest joy, because, with a perfect will, they will what God wills.
Whenever such a will prevails, there is neither pain nor dread, but there is the fulfillment of all one longed for and wanted, and the quiet achievement of what one had desired. As it says in Ps.
97:8: "The daughters of Judah rejoiced because of thy judgments, O Lord/' And our Lord, having predicted the terrible things of the Day of Judgment, went on to say: "But when these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your head, because your redemption is at hand" (Luke 21:28).
It is, therefore, useless for people after the manner of men to feel pity for themselves or others on account of the misery that awaits them. For we must not try to think how we may escape from this misery through fear, nor must we preach about it in such a way that people are filled with fright and terror at the thought of it, except in the case of those who wallow in the filth of the world, for they need to be scared into penitence. But people who are already penitent and full of sorrow for their sins are in need of preaching that encourages them to learn to wait with joy for what is to come and to ask that that Last Day may come soon. We do not escape the wrath of God and the misery and horror of the Last Judgment by fearing them but by loving them, and our conscience is quieted when we conform to the will of God.24
Of what use is it to fear the Day of Judgment? For a man who fears it hates it and does not want it to come. But now, it cannot possibly be that it will not come, and it cannot possibly be that it will come to bring benefit and salvation to one who hates its coming. It is the will of God and his good pleasure that it will come. One who resists his will and fears the Day of Judgment will therefore rightfully be condemned as a "rebel against God"
Hence, the apostle is right when he says in the last chapter of II Timothy: "[There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness
24 "Conformitas voluntatis Dei" (a favorite phrase of Gabriel Biel, and also of Bernard of Clairvaux and Staupitz).
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me at that day], and not to me only, but also to them that love his coming" (II Tim.
4:8). And Peter says in the last chapter of his second letter: "Seeing that all these things are to be dissolved, what manner of people ought you to be in holy conversation and godliness?" (II Peter 3:11.)
And to Titus, the apostle says: "We should live soberly, and justly, and godly in this world, looking for the blessed hope and coming of the glory of the great God," etc. (Titus 2:12 f.) And our
Lord says in Luke 12:36: "And you yourselves be like men who wait for their lord when he shall return from the wedding."
None has vanquished this fear but Christ alone. He has overcome death and all temporal evils and even eternal death. Those who believe in him have absolutely nothing more to fear, but with a blessed feeling of pride, they can despise all those evils and laugh at them and rejoice in them, knowing that they will not perish and be swallowed up but that they will experience and live to see even with their own eyes the victory that Christ has won over those evils. So they can say: "O death, where is thy sting?" (I Cor. 15:55).
Therefore, we cannot overcome death and its evils by power and strength and we cannot escape them by running away from them in fear but only by bearing them patiently and willingly in weakness, i.e., without lifting a finger against them. This is the lesson Christ teaches us by his example: he went confidently to meet his Passion and his death.
For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. (Rom. 8:14.) "To be led by the Spirit of God" means freely, promptly, gladly to mortify the flesh, i.e., the old man in us, i.e., to despise and renounce all that is not God, even ourselves. It means "not to be afraid of death or of its friends, the savage race of penalties"25 and "to give up the vain joys of earth and its dirty, sordid fields"28 and readily to abandon all good things and to embrace evils instead. This is not the achievement of nature but of the Spirit of For you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear; but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba, Father. (Rom. 8:15.)
25 Quoted from the hymn "Virginis proles" in the Breviary of the Augustinian Hermits. (Cf. Ficker, p. 366, n. 16.) 2 6 This too is a line from a hymn of the Augustinian Breviary ("Jesu corona celsior, commune confessoris non pontificis").
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT The apostle formulates an antithesis, i.e., he puts one thing over against another and makes a comparison or a contrast. For "servant" and "son" are here put against one another as in John
8:35: "The servant abides not in the house forever, but the son abides forever." In the same way, the spirit of bondage is contrasted with the spirit of sonship and the fear of the servant with the love of the son. Hence, the term "bondage" must here be understood in an abstract sense as if, if one may say so, bondage were derived from "bond servant" as "sonship" is from "son."
"Bondage" must here be taken to mean "bondage to sin," as in John 8:34: "Everyone that commits sin is a servant of sin."
The law could not liberate anyone from this bondage. For, by instilling the fear of punishment, it only compelled men to do the works of the law and thereby it did not mortify the doings of the flesh but rather increased them, for it deepened the hatred against the law and also the inclination and desire to transgress it.
This spirit is called the spirit of "fear" in two respects: First, because, as we have stated, by threatening people with punishment, it compelled these against their will to do the works of the law— with the result that (because one cannot but hate what one fears) they turned away inwardly from the intent and purpose of the law to the same degree by which they were forced to comply with it. This is symbolized in Ex. 20:18, where the people of Israel stood afar off, trembling with fear to draw near to the mountains.
For when the heart and man's better part turn away from God and his law, it is of no significance if one practices outward obedience with the lesser part, i.e., the body, by doing good works and observing religious ceremonies. As our Lord says to the hypocrites:
"This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." (Matt. 15:8; Isa. 29:13.) Secondly: This spirit is called the spirit of fear, because at the time of trial and testing this slavish fear compels man to neglect even the outward compliance with the law. To be sure, this fear should be called a worldly fear rather than a slavish one, for it is not the fear that the law may not be fulfilled but the fear that temporal goods may be lost or that evils may impend, and it is therefore even worse than slavish fear. John refers to the slavish fear when he says (I John 4:18): "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear."
Notice how profound the words of Scripture are! We are never or rarely without fear, because none of us is without concupiscence or the flesh or the old man in him. But coveting is never without the fear that one may lose what one covets. Thus, none of us is endowed with perfect love. Similarly, the saying: "Everyone that commits sin is the servant of sin," seems, at first glance, to express
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS a judgment that does not apply to many, but if one looks more closely into it, one finds that it applies to all: for we all are the servants of sin, because we all commit sin, if not by deed, then surely by desire and inclination—as we have sufficiently explained before.
According to Blessed Augustine's comment on this passage,27 the "spirit of fear" is "he who has the power of death" (i.e., the devil) "and it is given to those who cannot fulfill the commandments of the law because they serve the desires of the flesh."
But it is much better to say that it is that stirring of the dread of the law in the prudence of the flesh which arises when the law is proclaimed and acknowledged, for as long as one does not know the law, it is quiescent. This is symbolized in Ex. 4:3, where
Moses fled in horror when the rod he had cast on the ground became a serpent. The same thing happens when a man who is ignorant of the law, and is therefore wont not to observe it, is informed of the law: he becomes surly and loathes the law, and he looks back with sadness to the liberty from which he is now cut off. Such is the spirit of fear.
The apostle says: "You received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear," in other words: formerly you were in the spirit of fear and under a taskmaster, namely, the law, that drove you on, but now that you are free you have not again received the spirit of fear but, rather, the spirit of sonship which is the spirit of trusting faith. To this faith he gives most significant expression in the words: whereby we cry: Abba. In the spirit of fear, we can hardly open our mouth to mumble something and we certainly cannot cry. But a trusting faith opens the heart wide and releases feelings and speech, whereas fear draws them together and tightens them, as experience amply proves. Neither does it say: "Abba," but instead it hates God and flees from him and mutters against him as if he were an enemy and oppressor. For those who are in the spirit of fear and not in the spirit of adoption do not taste how sweet the Lord is (Ps. 34:8; I Peter 2:3), but he appears hard to them and difficult to please. In their heart they call him a tyrant, though with their mouth they say, "Father," just as did that servant in the Gospel (Matt. 25:24) who hid the money of his lord and said: "I know that you are a hard man, reaping where you did not sow," etc.
Of this sort are the people who are displeased that the Lord does not accept the merits of any man but has compassion on us freely. Hence, they say: Thou hast given no commandments that are impossible to fulfill; thou hast not given us grace but only
27 Augustine, Propos. ex ep. ad Rom., 52.
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT knowledge; I have it still and now I give it back to thee! Instead of feeling thus, they should rejoice that he has not placed our hope in us, but in himself, in his mercy. All who are minded as they are, say secretly in their heart: God acts like a tyrant; he is not our father but our enemy. And this is true. But they do not know that one must agree with this enemy and that thus and only thus he becomes a friend and father. For he will not yield to us and change himself in order that we may be his friends and children.
Therefore we do not need to fear him or anything he wills or loves. But this cannot happen unless we have his spirit, so that we love what he loves with the same spirit and hate what he hates in the same way he does. We cannot love what God loves, unless we have his loving will and spirit. For if there must be conformity in what one should love, there must also be conformity in the feeling of love. Such people are called godlike men and sons of God because they are led by the Spirit of God.28
The difference between these two sorts of men is signified, on the one hand, by those who gave Christ in his Passion vinegar to drink or wine mixed with gall and hyssop (Matt. 27:34; John
19:29) and, on the other hand, by those who, after the resurrection, gave him a piece of broiled fish and a honeycomb (Luke 24:42 f.).
The first ones signify that, in their eyes, God is bitterer for them than gall and hyssop. This is why they give him of their own, namely: a bitter and unwilling heart; a sour, i.e., a desperate, heart. When the Lord tastes it, he does not want to drink it. The others, however, in whose eyes God is sweet as honey, give him this honey-sweet joy of their hearts, and he takes it and eats it all before them (Matt. 27:34). With respect to the former, Jer. 15:10 f. says: "All curse me, says the Lord/' And Isa. 8:21: "They shall curse their king and their God." Or does it not mean to curse God if one thinks in his heart that God is an enemy and adversary; if one opposes him in one's feeling and willing and tries with all one's powers to accomplish the opposite of what God wills, indeed, tries to undo God and his will and to change it into one's own, i.e., into nothing? To wish that someone be turned into nothing is the worst of all curses. And it is this that all the damned, all who have the prudence of the flesh, wish of God!
Now that this cry is not merely a passing sound, but a true confession of the heart, is shown by Gal. 4:6 f.: "And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his love into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father. Therefore he is no longer a servant, but a son, but if a son, then an heir through God." These words sound
28 Cf. Faber ad v. 15 f.: "Haec est conformitas filii Dei . . . Christi esse con* formes, imo esse Christiformes."
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS exactly like the text of this passage and they obviously say the same thing.
For the Spirit himself gives testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons of God,29 and if sons, heirs also; heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ; yet so, if we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him. For I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come that shall be revealed in us. (Rom. 8:16-18.)
In his "Sermon on the Annunciation," Blessed Bernard, filled with the Holy Spirit, shows most clearly30 that this testimony is nothing else but the trusting faith of our heart in God.31 In the first chapter he says: "I believe that this testimony consists of three parts. First of all, you must believe that you can have the forgiveness of sins only by the kindness of God. Secondly, you cannot call a single good work your own that God has not given to you.
Lastly, you cannot earn eternal life by any works, unless it, too, is given to you freely." Yet all this is by no means sufficient; we must regard it, rather, as some sort of beginning of faith, or, as it were, as its foundation. For, if you believe that only God can take away your sins, you have the right faith, but from here you must go on to believe, and you yourself must believe (and it is not you that can do this but the Holy Spirit must enable you to believe),
"that through him you really have the forgiveness of your sins.
This is the testimony of the Holy Spirit in our hearts that he says to us: Your sins are forgiven to you."
And this is what the apostle means when he says that a man is justified by faith32 (you must firmly believe that it applies to yourself, and not merely to the elect, that Christ died for your sins and gave satisfaction for them).
29 Here is Luther's gloss (the marginal gloss under numbers 1 and 2) (WA 56, 78 f., 13 ff.): "The Holy Spirit himself, who is bestowed on us gives testimony to our spirit by strengthening our trust in God that we are the children of God (1-2). For we are and have as much as we believe. Whoever, therefore, believes with a full faith and is confident that he is a son of God, is a son of God, for in Mark 11:24 it says, 'All things whatsoever you pray and ask for, believe that you receive them and you shall have them/ and in Matt. 9:29, 'According to your faith be it done unto you.'"
"(1) For whosoever by strong faith and hope is confident that he is a son of God is a son of God. But none can do this without the Spirit.
"(2) Against Eccl. 9:1, 'Man knows not whether he is worthy of hatred or of love.'"
3 0 Luther quotes with interruptions from Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermo in festo annunciatonis b. Mariae virg. 1.
31 "Fiducia cordis in Deum."
32 Bernard does not use the expression "iustificari per fidem" but he says ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT "It is the same with merits: it is not enough that you believe that we can have them only through Christ. Your faith is whole only if the Spirit of truth gives testimony in your heart that you yourself have them through him," and this becomes a fact when you firmly believe that the works you do are acceptable and agreeable to God whatever they may turn out to be in the long run.
And you have this faith that they are agreeable to God if you feel that you are nothing before God on account of these works even though they are good and done from obedience and because you do no evil works. When good works are done with this humility and with this feeling of compunction, they become acceptable in God's sight. "It is the same with eternal life: it is not enough to believe that God gives it by grace, but you must have the testimony of the Spirit that you yourself are about to obtain it by The text shows clearly that the apostle has these three points in mind. For he says: "Who shall accuse against the elect of God?"
(Rom. 8:33.) In other words: we are certain that our sins will not be laid to our charge. Likewise, he says of merits: "We know that to them that love God he will work together all things for good."33
(Rom. 8:28.) Likewise, he says of eternal glory: "I am persuaded that neither things present nor things to come, etc., shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ." (Rom.
For the expectation of the creature waits for the revelation of the sons of God. (Rom. 8:i().)34 The apostle philosophizes and thinks about the things of the world in another way than the philosophers and metaphysicians do, and he understands them differently from the way they do. For the philosophers are so deeply engaged in studying the present state of things that they explore only what and of what kind they are, but the apostle turns our attention away from the consideration of things as they are now, and from what they are as to essence and accidents, and directs us to regard them in terms of what they will be. He does not speak of the "essence" of the creature, and of the 33 Following Faber, Luther reads "cooperatuf
("he works together") instead of "cooperantur"
("they work together"). He comments in the Gloss (WA 56, 83, 16 if.): "The Greek text has 'he works together/ and this is better, for the reference is to the Spirit. The meaning, therefore, is this: It is not strange that he makes intercession for us, for he works together with the saints in all they do. The term 'he works together' is an explanation of 'he makes intercession.' In other words: He intercedes for us just as he works everything else together with us."
34 Luther's glosses on Rom. 8:18-30 (WA 56, 79, 10 ff.) are given in full at the end of our translation of the Scholia on Chapter VIII.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS way it "operates," or of its "action" or "inaction," and "motion," but, using a new and strange theological word, he speaks of "the expectation of the creature." By virtue of the fact that his soul has the power of hearing the creature waiting, he no longer directs his inquiry toward the creature as such but to what it waits for.
But alas, how deeply and painfully we are caught up in categories and quiddities, and how many foolish opinions befog us in metaphysics! When shall we learn to see that we waste so much precious time with such useless studies and neglect better ones? We never cease to live up to the saying of Seneca:35 "We do not know what we should know because we have learned superfluous things; indeed, we do not know what is good for us because we have learned only what harms us."
Indeed, I believe that I owe this duty to the Lord of crying out against philosophy and turning men to Holy Scripture. For, perhaps, if someone else who had not been through it all were to do it, he would either be scared to do it or he would not be believed.
But I have been in the grind of these studies for, lo, these many years and am worn out by it, and, on the basis of long experience,
I have come to be persuaded that it is a vain study doomed to perdition.
For this reason, I admonish you all as earnestly as I can: Be quickly done with these studies and let it be your only concern not to establish and to defend them, but, rather, to deal with them as with bad skills that we learn only in order to get rid of them or as with errors that we take up in order to refute them. So we undertake these studies only in order to reject them, or, at least, for the purpose of getting acquainted with the manner of discourse of those with whom we have to maintain relations. It is high time that we be transferred from other studies and learn
Jesus Christ "and him crucified" (I Cor. 2:2).
So then, you will be the best philosophers and the best explorers of nature36 if you learn from the apostle to consider the whole creature as it waits, groans, and travails in pain, i.e., as it turns with disgust from what now is and yearns for what is to come.
Then the science of the essence of things and of their accidental qualities and differences will soon become worthless. Thus, the foolishness of the philosophers is like that of a man who stands by a builder and marvels at the way the pieces and boards of wood are being cut and hewn and measured and who remains stupidly content with it all, utterly unconcerned about what the builder
35 "Quia philosophi oculum ita in presenliam rerum immergunt, ut solum quidditates et qualitatesearumspeculentur"
3(J Seneca, ep. 45, 4.
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT finally plans to accomplish by all his labors. This workman is an empty-head, and his work is pointless. In the same way, the fools of philosophers look at God's creature: it is constantly being prepared for the glory that is to come, but they see only what it is in itself and how it is equipped but have no thought whatsoever for the end for which it was created.
Would it, then, not be sheer madness on our part to sing the praises of philosophy? For is it not so that, while we think highly of the science of the essences and actions and inactions of things, the things themselves loathe their essences and their actions and inactions and groan under them? We take pleasure and we glory in our knowledge of the created world and yet it mourns over itself and is dissatisfied with itself! Or do we not call a man mad, I ask you, who, on seeing someone moaning and weeping, laughs and glories in the fact that he sees him merry and happy? Such a man is everywhere rightly regarded as a crazy maniac. It would be tolerable if only uneducated folk who do not know better regarded philosophy as important and if it were they that do not know how to interpret the sighing of things. But now it is the scholars and the theologians who, infected as they are by the same "prudence of the flesh," derive a happy science from the mourning things of the world and laughingly gather knowledge from the sighings of creation—and all this with a marvelous display of intellectual power.
The apostle is therefore right when, in Col. 2:8, he speaks up against philosophy and says: "Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy and vain deceit according to the tradition of men." If the apostle had wanted to understand any philosophy as something good and useful, he certainly would not have condemned it so unequivocally! We conclude, therefore, that anyone who searches into the essences and functionings of the creatures rather than into their sighings and earnest expectations is certainly foolish and blind. He does not know that also the creatures are created for an end. This passage shows this clearly enough?1
For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him that made it subject, in hope. (Rom. 8:20.)
Most exegetes take the term "creature" in this passage to mean man, because he has a share in everything created. But it is better to understand man through the word "vanity," as it says expressly and very rightly in Ps. 39:5: "Surely every man living is altogether vanity." For it is certainly true that, if man, the old
37 "Rerum speculatores"
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS man, were not, there would be no vanity. For all that God made "was very good'* (Gen. 1:31) and is good to this day, as the apostle says in I Tim. 4:4: "Every creature of God is good," and in Titus
1:15: "To the pure all things are pure/' It therefore becomes vain, evil, and noxious, etc., without its fault and from the outside, namely, in this way: Because man does not judge and evaluate it rightly and because he enjoys it in a wrong way, he regards it more highly than fact and truth allow, inasmuch as man who is able to grasp God and to find his fulfillment in God alone38 (as far as his mind and spirit are concerned) presumes to possess this peace and satisfaction in created things. It is to this vanity, therefore (i.e., to this wrong enjoyment), that the creature is subjected, just as grass is in itself something good and not something worthless; indeed, it is good, necessary, and useful for cattle, but to man it is worthless and useless as a food, yet if it were used as human food, it would be regarded and valued more highly than its nature allows. So do all who do not love God from a really pure heart and who do not fervently thirst for him. This is characteristic of every man who is born of Adam and lives without the Holy Spirit.
Hence, it is said of all in Ps. 14:3: "They are all gone aside," i.e., they have become vain. And through man the whole creature becomes vanity, though, to be sure, against its will. As the Preacher says: "Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity. What has a man more"
(than vanity) "of all his labor that he takes under the sun?" (Eccl.
1:2 f.) He says significantly that man has no other profit than vanity. For created things are good in themselves, and those who know God know also the things of nature not as something vain but as they are in truth; and they use them but do not take advantage of them. Hence, it says in Titus 1:15: "To the pure all things are pure," but to the impure nothing is pure. So then, the same things are pure and impure on account of the fact that they to whom they are either pure or impure differ from one another.
Because the creature also itself shall be delivered from the servitude of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that every creature groans and travails in pain, even till now. And not only it, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body. (Rom. 8:21-23.)
He says two things: First, the creature will be delivered, namely, from vanity, when the wicked will have been damned and taken away and the old man abolished. Such deliverance happens even
38 "Qui Dei capax est et solo Deo saturari potest."
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT now every day in the saints. Secondly, it will also no longer be either vain or corruptible. Hence, the saying of Isa. 30:26: "And the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days."
Here many say39 that, in the first seven days when the world was created, the sun was much brighter than it is now, but that it became darker by fault of the sin of man who fell into sin on the seventh or sixth day; they say also that, in the world to come, it will be seven times brighter than it was then. This opinion cannot be proved from Scripture, though in a certain sense it can be sustained. Nor does the word of Isaiah demand this exegesis. For we can understand it by explaining it in this way: "The light of the sun will be sevenfold/' i.e., "like the light of seven days," i.e., as if the brilliance of seven days were one brilliance, i.e., the brilliance of all seven days together.
For we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man sees, why does he hope for? But if we hope for that which we see not, we wait for it with patience. (Rom. 8:24-25.)
Grammatically, this way of speaking may be figurative, yet, theologically understood, it expresses a most intense feeling in a most direct and telling way. For it is ever so that when the hope that rises from the longing for a beloved object is delayed, love is made all the greater. And thus what is hoped for and the hoping person become one through tense hoping, or as Blessed Augustine40 puts it: "Anima plus est, ubi amat, quam ubi animat" ("The soul is more where it loves than where it lives"). In the same way, we say in common speech: My flame is here! And the poet says:41
"You are my flame, Amyntas." And Aristotle says in Book 3, On the Soul/2 that the intellect and what it understands, sensory perception and what it perceives, and, generally, potentiality and its object become one. In the same way love changes the lover into the beloved.
39 Cf. Gl. ord. ad loc.
4 0 According to Ficker (p. 374, n. 10), the saying must be attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, De praecept.
20, 60: "Neque enim praesentior spiritus noster est ubi animat, quam ubi amat/'
Luther quotes the saying as Tauler, who attributes it to Augustine, cites it: "De seel ist vil meer da sy liebt dann sy in dem leib sey" (Sermones,
Augsburg, 1508, 12b.).
John von Paltz (Celifodina, Leipzig, 1511, J III) attributes the saying to Hugh of St. Victor and cjuotes it in the following form: "Anima ibi plus est ubi amat quam ubi animat"
("The soul is much more at home where it loves than where it lives").
41 Vergil, Bucol. Eel, 3, 66.
42 Cf. Aristotle, De anima, III, 1; 2; 5; 7.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS Accordingly, hope changes him who hopes into what he hopes for, but what he hopes for is not apparent. Hope therefore transfers him into the unknown and hidden, into an inward darkness,43 so that he does not know what he hopes for and yet knows what he does not hope for. Thus, then, the soul that hopes has become hope and, at the same time, what it hopes for, because it is staying with what it does not see, i.e., hope. For if hope were seen, i.e., if he that hopes and what he hopes for mutually recognized each other, he would not thus be transferred into what he hopes for, i.e., into hope and the unknown, but he would be carried away to what he would see, and he would enjoy what he had come to know.
Likewise the Spirit also helps our infirmity. For we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself asks for us with unspeakable groanings. And he that searches the hearts, knows what the Spirit desires, because he asks for the saints according to God. (Rom. 8:26-27.)
It is not a bad but a very good sign if the opposite of what we pray for appears to happen. Just as it is not a good sign if our prayers eventuate in the fulfillment of all we ask for.
This is so because the counsel and will of God far excel our counsel and will, as it says in Isa. 55:8: 'Tor my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." And in Ps.
94:11: "The Lord knows the thoughts of men that they are vain."
And in Ps. 33:10: "The Lord brings to nought the counsels of nations, and he rejects the devices of people and casts away the counsels of princes."
Hence, it comes about that when we pray to God for something, whatever it may be, and he hears our prayers and is about to fulfill them, he does so in such a way that he contravenes all our conceptions, i.e., devices, so that it seems that he is more offended by us after our prayers than before and that what we pray for is being less fulfilled than before. God does all this because it is his nature first to destroy and to bring to nothing whatever is in us before he gives us of his own,44 as it is written: "The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings down to hell and brings back again" (I Sam. 2:7,6).
By this his most blessed counsel he makes us capable of receives Cf. Dionysius Areopagita, Myst. TheoL, 1, 3. Opera Dionys.
44 Here Luther appears to follow the teaching of the German mystics, especially Tauler.
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT ing his gifts and his works. Only then we are fit for his works and counsels, when we have stopped making plans, let our hands rest, and have become purely passive in relation to God in our inner as well as our outer doings. This is what he means when he says:
"My thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways" (Isa. 55:8).
When, therefore, everything about us seems to be hopeless and all that happens goes against our prayers and wishes, then those
"groanings" commence "that cannot be uttered." And then "the Spirit helps our infirmities," for without the help of the Spirit we could not possibly bear up under God when he acts in this way to hear and fulfill our prayers. Then the soul is told: "Expect the Lord, do manfully, and let thy heart take courage and bear up under God" (Ps. 27:14). And again: "Be subject to the Lord and pray to him," "and he will bring it to pass." (Ps. 37:7,5.) Then there comes about what is said in Isa. 28:21: "He does a strange work in order to perform his own work."45 And in Ps. 103:11: "As the heavens are high above the earth" (i.e., not in accordance with our thoughts), "so great has been his loving kindness toward us," etc.
We can understand that people who do not know God and his will in this way find themselves in the situation of those of whom it is said in Ps. 106:13,24: "They did not bear up under his counsel" and "regarded the desirable land as nothing." They rely on their own good and godly intention and think in their presumptuousness that all they seek and want and pray for is right and proper. But when things do not turn out as they thought, they immediately go to pieces and give up in despair, thinking that God wants neither to hear nor to fulfill their prayers. When everything seemingly went against their intentions, they should instead have hoped all the more confidently precisely for this reason, for they must know that "they are dust and that man is like grass" (Ps.
103:14-15). But they want to be like God and, in their thinking, they want to be, not beneath God, but beside him, as if their minds were perfectly conformed to his.46 This is as possible or, rather, as little possible as that a piece of clay which, according to its nature, is fit for a pitcher or some kind of vase can in its present shape correspond to the form or artist's conception after which the potter intends to mold it.47 People of this sort are rather stupid; in their pride they know neither God nor themselves.
45 "Alienum est opus eius ab eo, ut operetur opussuum"
46 WA 56, 376, 19 ff.: "Ipsi veto sicut Deus esse volunt et cogitationes suas non esse infra, sed iuxta Deum, omnino conformes sciL atque perfectas."
47 Cf. Luther's marginal notes on Tauler's Sermones, which were perhaps written at the same time when he worked on these lectures. WA 9,102, 17 ff.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS Now Isaiah says this: "But now, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay and thou our potter, and we all are the works of thy hand/' (Isa. 64:8.) People, therefore, who do not have the Spirit, run away from God's working and do not want to let it happen to them, but they want to shape themselves and their own lives. But people who have the.Spirit are helped by him. Hence, they do not despair but they remain confident when they feel that the opposite of what they have so sincerely prayed for happens.
For God's working must be hidden and we cannot understand its way.48 For it is concealed so that it appears to be contrary to what our minds can grasp. This is why Gabriel said to the Virgin: "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee," i.e., something that will be beyond your thought will come, "and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee" (Luke 1:35), i.e., you will not understand it, therefore do not ask how it can come about.
In this way he acted in his own proper work, in that which is the foremost of his works and the pattern49 of all of them, i.e., in Christ. When he wanted to glorify him and establish him in his
Kingship, he made him die, he caused him to be confounded and to descend into hell, contrary in the utmost to what all his disciples fervently wished and hoped for in their devoutest thought.50 So he dealt also with Blessed Augustine when he let him fall deeper and deeper into error despite the prayer of his mother, so that he might grant it to her beyond her asking. And so he deals with all saints.
This is what is meant in Ps. 16:3: "To the saints who are in his land, he has made wonderful all my desires in them." And in Ps.
4:3: "Know that God has made his holy one wonderful," namely, "because the Lord will hear me when I shall cry unto him." And in Ps. 111:2: "The works of the Lord are great, sought out according to all his wills." For how can he be more wonderful than by letting a man who prays for chastity fall into the greater temptation of sensuality, than by letting a man who prays for strength slip into greater weakness? Yet, if one bears up under him, he accomplishes more than one had asked for. This is meant by what it says in Eph. 3:20: "Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think," etc., and in II Cor.
48 Lit., "God's work must be hidden, and one cannot understand it when it happens."
49 On the significance of "exemplar/' cf. L. Thimme, Christi Bedeutung filr (Leipzig, 1933), pp. 19 fL; E. Seeberg, Luthers
Vol. II: Christus (Stuttgart, 1937).
50 Cf. E. Vogelsang, Die Anfdnge von Luthers Christologie (Berlin, 1929), p. ggn.
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT 9:8-9: "And God is able to make all grace abound unto you, as it is written: He has scattered abroad, he has given to the poor"
(i.e., to those who kept themselves passive toward him).
As a rule, we understand our own work before it is done, but God's work we do not understand until it has been done; Jer.
23:20: "In the latter days you shall understand his counsel," in other words: in the beginning or at first, we understand only what we plan, but in the end we understand what God has in mind.
(John 14:29: "When it shall come to pass, you may believe.") As I have said before, it is as when an artist comes upon some material that is fit and suitable to be formed into a work of art.
This fitness of the material is, as it were, an unfelt prayer for the form which the artist understands and fulfills as he gets ready to make what in its suitableness it longs for. So also God comes upon our feeling and thinking51 and sees what we pray for, what we are fit for, and what we long for. And then he grants the prayer and he proceeds to shape us into the form his art has planned. Thereby the form and idea of our designing are necessarily undone. So it is written also in Gen. 1:2: "The Spirit of God moved upon the waters, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." Notice that it says "upon the face of the deep" and not "upon the deep," for, as far as we can see, all seems to go against us when the Holy Spirit comes over us and is about to do what we ask for.
About this endurance and sufferance of God, I refer you to Tauler. He has written in German about this matter and more enlighteningly than anyone else.52
This then, yes, this is what is meant by the word "We do not know how to pray as we ought." Hence, we need the Spirit to help our infirmities. Who would believe that these words could be so profound!
Christ says to his disciples in John 14:16: "I shall pray the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete," etc. Now
"Paraclete" means "comforter" and "advocate." This one word confirms sufficiently what the apostle says here: "We do not know what we must pray for." A man who looks for an advocate shows thereby that he does not know what he should say or ask for, and one who needs a comforter admits thereby that he is desperate and dejected. This is how it is with us when God grants our prayers.
("feeling") and "cogitatus"
("thinking") are nominalistic psychological terms.
6 2 Cf. Tauler, Sermones (Augsburg, 1508), Serm. 62, 73, 82. Cf. Ficker (p. 378, n. 13).
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS For if we pray only for what is good and advantageous for us and the opposite comes about, we are necessarily made sad and downcast. Everything about us is then despair and damnation. Then another must intervene—one who understands this and prays for us and strengthens us in the meantime, lest we lose heart.
Toward the first grace as well as toward the glory of eternal life we must always hold ourselves passive just as a woman does when she conceives.53 For we too are the bride of Christ. Hence, we may engage in prayer and petitions before we receive grace, yet when grace comes and the soul is about to be impregnated with the Spirit, there must be neither prayer nor any action on our part but only a keeping still. This is certainly a hard thing to do and casts us into deep affliction. For not to think and to will is for the soul the same as to go into darkness as though it were to be ruined and reduced to nothing, and this it seeks violently to avoid.
So it comes about that it frequently deprives itself of the noblest gifts of grace.
I call "first grace" not that which is infused at the beginning of conversion, as in baptism, contrition, and remorse,54 but all subsequent and new grace which we call a degree and increase of grace.
For God gives first operating grace; he lets it be used and he lets it co-operate until he is ready to infuse another one; and when it is infused, he again lets it become a co-operating grace, although when it was infused it was an operating and first grace, even if with respect to the previous one it is a second one. It is called
"first" grace always with respect to itself, because it is first operating and then, secondly, co-operating. For this reason simpletons have not learned, as we say in the proverb, to salute God when they meet him55 and to take the gifts he offers to them. But the prudent take them readily and gladly. For here we need greatest prudence in order that we do not set our minds on that which is apparent (for then we shall fall into despair) but on that which is to come and is unknown and not apparent (Heb. 11:1).
For this reason, the apostle uses a very telling word in this 5 3 Cf. John von Staupitz, "Von der nachfolgung des willigen sterbens Christi"
XI (Opera, ed. Knaake, Potsdam, 1867, Vol. I, 78).
5 4 Cf. Gabriel Biel, IV Sent., d. 9, q. 1, a. 1, n. 2: "Gratia iustificans, i.e., . . . prima gratia. . . . Sacramenta per quae confertur prima gratia:. baptismus et penitential
Gott griisst, soil man danken."
T h e meaning of this proverb is:
One must use an occasion as is offers itself. Cf. Ernst Thiele, Luthers ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT passage. Where our text50 reads: He • . . knows what the spirit longs for (Rom. 8:27), the Greek text57 has: "He . . . knows what is the prudence of the spirit/' For phronema means prudence, as in the verse: "The prudence of the spirit is life and peace" (Rom.
8:6), for the same word is used also here.
We must note that when the apostle says: "We do not know what to pray for/' he does not mean to suggest that saintly and devout men should pray for something that goes against them and is harmful to them but, rather, that they pray for things that are too small, lowly, or insignificant in comparison to what God wants to give. Hence, he speaks of "our infirmity" rather than of "our wickedness." For we are too weak and impotent to pray for something big. Hence, when God hears our prayers and is about to grant them, he does away with the insignificant request we thought of in our weakness and instead gives us what the Spirit asks for us.
It is like this: A son sends a letter to his father and asks him for a little sum of silver,58 whereas the father is disposed to give him a large amount of gold.59 When the father reads the letter he throws it away and disregards it. But when the son hears about this and when he realizes that he will not get the little sum he asked for, he becomes surly.
This is why the Lord said to the sons of Zebedee in Matt. 20:22:
"You know not what you ask," and yet they asked for something good. But then there follows the question: "Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?" in other words: Your prayer will not be fulfilled in the way you expect. You do not ask for the cup and yet you will drink it. You pray for less than you ought.
Therefore, this weakness will be crucified in you by the cup of suffering, and you will become strong. And, in John 16:24, he says: "Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name; ask and you shall receive that your joy may be made full." How can this be true, inasmuch as he taught them to pray: "Our Father"? But they prayed in their name, not in the name of Christ, and therefore for something less than Christ, not in the Holy Spirit, but according to the flesh. Hence, he goes on to say: "In that day you shall ask in my name" (John 16:26). For that man prays in the name of Christ, who also prays in sufferings.
Let us come to a conclusion. There is no better proof that we do not know what to pray for than that we do not accept as we ought what the good God offers to us, but that because of our in56 I.e., the Vulgate.
58 Lit., nummum = a silver coin, the Roman penny.
59 Lit., milia aureorum = thousands of goldpieces.
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS firmity we get scared and want to run away from it unless the Spirit prays for us and helps us in our infirmity. For one who does not accept as he ought what is offered to him certainly gives thereby conclusive proof that he did not know what to pray for. He deserves to be told: You fool, why did you pray at all if you do not want to accept what you prayed for? We should therefore accept the fright that overcomes us when God gives his gifts, with a joy that is greater than the longing with which we asked for them.
But do we not preach far and wide that God's power, wisdom, goodness, righteousness, and mercy are great and marvelous, yet can it be that we do not understand what they are? No, we do not understand what they are, because we understand them metaphysically, i.e., in accordance with our tendency to comprehend them as apparent and not as hidden, while as a matter of fact he has concealed his power only under weakness, his wisdom under foolishness, his goodness under austerity, his righteousness under sin, and his mercy under wrath.
This is why many do not recognize God's power when they see his weakness, etc. It says in Ps. 81:7: "I heard thee in the hiddenness of the tempest." Notice that it says "in the hiddenness," which means: when the fury of his wrath hides the sweetness of his mercy, i.e., when he grants our prayers by doing the opposite of what we look for. We pray for salvation, and he places us under greater damnation in order thus to save us, and, in such a tempest, he hides his way of granting our prayers. This is symbolized in Ex.
5:5 ff., where we are told that when God was about to set his people free, he caused Pharaoh to increase his oppression of them in order to make it seem that he did not want to set them free at all.
And in the psalm it says: "O how great is the multitude of thy sweetness/1 i.e., of thy goodness, "which thou hast hidden from them that fear thee/1 i.e., which thou hast not shown publicly,
"which thou hast wrought for them that take refuge in thee, before the sons of men/1 etc. (Ps. 31:19).
We know that to them that love God, he will work together all things for good, even to them that, according to purpose, are called saints. For whom he foreknew, he also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of his Son, that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And whom he predestinated, them he also called. And whom he called, them he also justified.
And whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not even his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how has he not also with him given us all things? Who shall
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT accuse against the elect of God? God that justifies. Who is he that shall condemn? Christ Jesus that died, yea, that is risen also again; who is at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trib~ ulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or persecution, or the sword? As it is written: For thy sake we are put to death all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
But in all these things we overcome because of him that has loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord. (Rom. 8:28-39.) On this text hangs the whole passage that follows to the end of the eighth chapter of the letter before us. For the apostle wants to show that to the elect who are loved by God and who love God, the Spirit makes all things, even though they are evil, work together for good. He approaches here the subject of predestination and election, indeed, he discusses it from now on. This subject is not so unfathomable as one commonly believes; we should, rather, say that it is full of sweet comfort to the elect and all who have the spirit, but bitter and hard beyond measure to the prudence of the flesh.
The only reason and cause why so many adversities and evils do not separate the saints from the love of God is that they are called, and not merely called but "called according to purpose."
To them alone, therefore, and to no others "he makes everything work together for good."
If there were not the divine purpose, and our salvation rested upon our will and our works, it would be based on chance. How easily could—I shall not say: all those evils at once, but—merely a single one of them hinder or overturn this chancel
But by saying: "Who shall accuse? Who shall condemn? Who shall separate?" the apostle shows that the elect are not saved contingently but necessarily. Hence, it is obvious that neither mere chance nor wonderfully contrary resistance to so many evils can obstruct it. The reason why this is God's way of salvation and why he exposes his elect to as many rapacious graspings as there are evils—he enumerates them here, and they all try to pull the elect into damnation so that they will not be saved—the reason why God chooses this method of salvation is that he wants to show that he saves us not by our merits but by sheer election and his immutable will, and thus he renders vain the efforts of so many grasping and very fierce adversaries. For if he did not lead us
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS through so many terrors, he would give us much leeway to think highly of our merits. But now he makes plain that we are saved by his immutable love. And he proves through all this not our freedom of decision but the inflexible and firm will of his predestination.
For how could a man possibly break through all these things in which he would despair a thousand times, unless the eternal and steady love of God led him through and the Spirit helped our infirmities by his presence and made intercession for us with unutterable groanings? For in such a situation man does not know what he should do and what he should pray for. Indeed, he would pray that he get out of it, and this would be foolish, because it would go against his salvation. And so we do not know what we should pray for, especially in situations of weakness, i.e., in such sufferings.
Where, then, is now our righteousness? Where are the good works, and the freedom of decision, and the contingency of things?
For so one must preach! This is right preaching! This means to cut the throat of the "prudence of the flesh." Up to this point, the apostle cut off its hands and feet and its tongue, but now he cuts its throat and kills it. For now everyone must see that he is nothing in himself but that he can find all his good only in God.
Our theologians, to be sure, subtle as they are, imagine they have accomplished something, though I do not know what it could be, when they adduce in this context their notion of the "contingent." They say that the elect are necessarily saved, namely, by the necessity of the consequence but not by consequent necessity.60 This is nothing but empty talk, especially in view of the 60 Cf. Duns Scotus, I Sent., d. 39, q. 5, n. 35; Gabriel Biel, III Sent, d. 20, q. un., a. 1B. The "consequent necessity" (necessitas consequentis or absoluta or simplex) means immutability and is generally attributed to God and his attributes. The "necessity of the consequence*' (necessitas consequentiae or conditionis) is the necessity that is determined by a cause that once in effect can no longer be changed, but it could have been different.
Luther discusses the same problem in De servo arbitrio (WA 18, 614-618).
It may be helpful to quote a key passage, except for a few phrases, according to the translation of J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston, Martin Luther on the Bondage of the Will (James Clarke & Company, Ltd., London, 1957), PP*
81 f.: "This is a point over which the Sophists have toiled for many years now (and have been defeated at last, and forced to gi\e in): they maintained that all things take place necessarily, but by necessity of consequence
(as they put it), and not by consequent necessity. By this distinction they eluded the force of their own admission—or rather deluded themselves. I shall not find it hard to show how unreal the distinction is. By necessity of consequence they mean, roughly speaking, this: If God wills something, it must needs be; but that which thus comes to be is something which of itself need not be; for only God exists necessarily, and everything else can
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT fact that they want to understand or at least give occasion to understand the concept of "consequent contingency" to mean that salvation can or cannot come by our decision. Thus I, too, once understood the matter.61
This concept of "the contingency of the consequent" is irrelevant to the theme under discussion. Moreover, it is meaningless to ask whether this "consequent" is contingent, as if (and this is implied in the question) it could be necessary, inasmuch as only
God is necessary in this sense. Therefore, it is a ridiculous addition if one says: The elect are necessarily saved by the necessity of the consequence, but not by consequent necessity, i.e., the consequent is not God, or: because it is not God, therefore salvation is by the necessity of consequence. What else does "to be contingent" mean than "to be a creature" and not God? They twist the understanding by turning the necessity of an occurrence into the necessity of the essence of a thing. This equivocation is here out of place.
For no one raises the question or doubts whether a created thing is contingent in its being, i.e., whether it is mutable or whether it is God and thus immutable. But the question is about the necessity of the sequel or whether what God has predestined will necessarily happen, and they concede that it will. And yet they make this superfluous addition, after they have said all that can be said.
For if you know that something will definitely happen by the necessity of the consequence, what does it matter if you know further whether, at this particular place, it is contingent or not?
This is as absurd as if, in case you were asked: If a son necessarily kills his father, must this necessarily happen? you would answer by saying: It will happen by the necessity of the consequence and then add that the son is not father, or the father has no son.62 They cease to be, if God so wills. This is to say that God's action is necessary, if he wills it, but the thing done is not in itself necessary. But what do they establish by this play on words? This, I suppose—the thing done is not necessary; that is, it has no necessity in its own essential nature: which is just to say, that the thing done is not God himself! Nevertheless, it remains true, that each thing does happen necessarily, if God's action is necessary or there is a necessity of consequence, however true it may be that it does not happen necessarily, in the sense that it is not God and has no necessity of its own essential nature....
"So their absurd formula, all things take place by necessity of consequence but not by consequent necessity amounts merely to this: everything takes place by necessity, but the things that take place are not God himself. But what need was there to tell us that? . . . So our original proposition still stands and remains unshaken: all things take place by necessity."
61 Cf. Luther's notes on Peter Lombard, II Sent., d. 26, c, 3 (WA 9, 71,5 fL).
«2 "Fiet necessitate consequentiae, sed filius non est pater, vel quia non habet filium."
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS who raise this question are asking therefore whether a contingency can hinder the necessity of a chain of events, and they make the presupposition that they know the contingency, and you teach by a petitio principii that there are contingent things and that they do not hinder the necessary occurrence of a sequence of events.
Your answer is correct, but what you teach is superfluous and irrelevant.
Simple people put the question as least in this way: Does the contingency of an event constitute an impediment of the certain predestination of God? The answer must be: With God there simply is no contingency, but only with us, because not even a leaf of a tree falls to the ground without the will of the Father.
Just as the essence of things, therefore, also the times are in his hands. When one relates the concept of necessity now to the subject and now to the connecting clause, one is guilty of equivocation, inasmuch as the question concerns only the contingency of the connecting clause or of time but in no way that of the subject.
We shall deal with this matter in three sections. First, we shall gather the proofs of immutable predestination from the words of Scripture and the works of God. Secondly, we shall critically analyze the objections and exceptions, and the arguments and reasons of those who shift guilt to God. Thirdly, in order to provide comfort to those who are frightened by all this, we shall bring out also its more pleasant aspects and thus induce them to hope.
In this and the following chapter of this letter, the apostle deals thoroughly and almost word for word with the first theme, and he begins, as I have already pointed out, with, "We know that those who love God," etc.
Accordingly, he says, first: who are called according to purpose.
It plainly follows, therefore, that others are not called according to the purpose. "Purpose" means here God's predestination or free election or deliberation or counsel. In Book I of the Confessions,
Blessed Augustine says about this:63 "Thou art wonderful, O God; thou changest thy opinion, but thou dost not change thy counsel."
Second: In the following chapter (Rom. 9:8 ft.), the apostle illustrates predestination by the two stories of Isaac and Ishmael, and of Jacob and Esau. He says expressly that these differed from one another only by election.
Third: At the same place, he quotes two Scriptural passages on it; one refers to the elect: "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy" (Rom. 9:15), and the other one to the rejected: "For this
63 Augustine, Confessiones, I, 4, 4.
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT very purpose did I raise you up," etc., and he concludes: "So then, he has mercy on whom he will, and whom he will, he hardens," etc. (Rom. 9:17-18). It is clear that he argues in the same way in chs. 10 and 11.
Fourth: Predestination is proved by the following quotation from John 10:29: "No one can snatch them out of the hand of my
Fifth: John 13:18: "I speak not of you all; I know whom I have chosen." And John 6:44: "No one can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him." And at the same place: "They shall all be taught of God." (John 6:45.)
Sixth: Ps. 115:3: "He has done all things whatsoever he would."
And II Tim. 2:19: "The foundation of God stands firm, having this seal: the Lord knows who are his."
A further proof are God's works: First, what, according to the following chapter, he did with Ishmael and Esau and with Pharaoh and the Egyptians.
Second: Predestination is shown by the fact that God exposes his saints to so many evils, all of which are like rapacious hands, and yet he does not let them get lost. Thereby he amply shows the firmness of his election: no creature can impede it, despite the fact that he leads the whole creature up against it, as he shows by the example of Pharaoh, who was hardened.
Third: Election is shown by the fact that he permits many to live a good life from the beginning and to do many good works and yet they are not saved; while, conversely, he lets many commit great evils who are nevertheless suddenly changed and saved. This is exemplified by Saul (I Sam. 13:13; 15:26 f.; 16:1) and Manasseh
(II Kings 21:1 ff.), and likewise by Judas the Traitor (Matt. 26:14, 47 ff.), and by the thief of the cross (Luke 23:33 ff.), and so forth, and by many harlots and crude sinners. By way of contrast, he rejects those who think they know everything and those who try to shine with good works. Thus he rejected one of the forty martyrs.64
There are many reasons that can be advanced against predestination, but they proceed from the "prudence of the flesh." Hence, whoever does not deny himself and has not learned to submerge his questions in the will of God and to subject them to it will
64 A martyrdom under the Emperor Licinius in Armenia Minor. One of the forty became scared and fled. Ficker (p. 384, n. 30) points out that the Missal of the Augustinians refers to this legend on the Day of the Forty
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS always ask why God wills this or does that, and he will never find an answer. And rightly so. For this foolish prudence places itself above God and passes judgment on his will as upon something inferior, while, as a matter of fact, it is about to be judged by him.
The apostle, therefore, destroys all its reasons by one brief word.
First, he restrains our temerity lest we sit in judgment on God's will. He says: "O man, who are you that you reply against God?"
(Rom. 9:20); in other words: You are subject to the will of God; why, then, do you presume to reply to it and to argue with it?
And then he advances the decisive reason: "Has not the potter a right over the clay?" (Rom. 9:21).
So then, the first objection, which is also the least weighty one, is this: Man has been given free will and thus he can earn merits or demerits. We answer to this as follows: The power of free decision in so far as it is not under the sway of grace has no ability whatsoever to realize righteousness, but it is necessarily in sins.
Hence, Blessed Augustine is right, when, in his book against Julian,65 he calls it "the enslaved, rather than free, will." But when it has received grace, the power of decision really becomes free, at all events in respect to salvation. To be sure, it is always free according to its nature, but only with respect to that which is in its power and is inferior to it but not with respect to that which is superior to it, since it is held captive in sins and then cannot choose the good according to God.
A second objection: "God will have all men to be saved" (I Tim.
2:4), and he gave his Son for us men, and he created man for the sake of eternal life. And likewise: Everything is there for man's sake and he is there for God's sake in order that he may enjoy him, etc. But this objection and others like it can just as easily be refuted as the first one: because all these sayings must be understood only with respect to the elect, as the apostle says in II Tim. 2:10:66 "All for the elect." Christ did not die for absolutely all, for he says:
"This is my blood which is shed for you" (Luke 22:20) and "for many" (Mark 14:24)—he did not say: for all—"to the remission of sins" (Matt. 26:28).
A third objection: God condemns none who is without sin.
And a man who is necessarily in sin is wrongly condemned. To this I reply: We are all necessarily in sin and under condemnation, but nobody is a sinner by coaction and against his will. For whoever hates sin is already outside sin and belongs to the elect.
But those whom God hardens, they are the ones to whom he gives the will voluntarily to be and to stay in sin and to love wicked65 Augustine, Contra Jul., II, 8, 23.
6(? Augustine, Enchiridion, XXVII, 103.
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT ness. Such are unavoidably in sin by the immutability of necessity but not of coaction.
A fourth objection: Why does he issue commandments and then does not want to see them fulfilled? And, what is worse, why does he harden men's will so that they want even more to act against the law? The cause, therefore, why men sin and are damned, lies in God. This is the strongest and chief objection. And the apostle replies to it mainly by saying: God wills it so and because he wills it so, it is not wicked. For everything is his as the clay is the potter's! He, therefore, gives his commandments in order that the elect fulfill them and the reprobate get entangled in them. And thus he shows his wrath as well as his mercy.
Here the prudence of the flesh speaks up and says: It is cruel and miserable of God that he seeks his glory in my wretchedness. Listen to the voice of the flesh! "My, my [wretchedness]," it says!
Take away this "my" and say instead: "Glory be to thee, O Lord!" and you will be saved! Thus the prudence of the flesh seeks only its own; it fears its own misery more than a desecration of God, and, for this reason, it follows its own will rather than God's.
We must, therefore, have a mind about God different from that which we have about man. For he does not owe anyone anything. To Job he says: "Who has given me before that I should repay him? All things that are under heaven are mine." (Job
41:11.) This is the word which the apostle quotes at the end of ch. 11 of this letter, where he says: "Who has first given to him, and recompense shall be made to him?" (Rom. 11:35).
This subject of predestination tastes very bitter to the prudence of the flesh. Indeed, it is so offended by it that it lets itself be carried away to the extreme of blasphemy, because here it is utterly destroyed and reduced to nothing. For it is forced to recognize that its salvation consists in no way of its own action, but that it can be found only outside itself, namely, in the election of God.
But all who have the "prudence of the spirit" delight in this subject and they are filled with an ineffable happiness, as we can see here in the apostle and in Hannah, the mother of Samuel (I Sam.
2:1 ff.). In between these there stand those who are just beginning to turn away from "the prudence of the flesh" or who are on the way toward "the prudence of the spirit." They are ready and willing to do the will of God, but they are fainthearted and they tremble when they hear about the teaching on predestination.
And so it is that, though these words, which are the best and most wholesome food for the soul, do not as yet give them direct
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS pleasure, they nevertheless find them comforting and consoling, and by antiperistasis?1 i.e., by a condition of contrast. Namely, in this way: there are no words that can more effectively shake up and humble the pride of men and undo the presumptuousness of the reliance on merits. People, therefore, who fear these words and are scared by them can take this reaction as a very good and happy sign, for the Scripture says: "Upon whom does my spirit rest except upon him that is humble and that trembles at my word"
(Isa. 11:2; 66:2). Also Christ says to them: 'Tear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom."
And Isa., ch. 40:68 "Say (to them that are of a fearful heart: Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come)." If he had not noticed that they thought the opposite, indeed, that they were afraid to the point of despair that the Kingdom of God would not come, he would certainly not have said: "You fainthearted, be comforted, for behold, your Lord will come." And again: "Blessed is the man that fears the Lord." (Ps. 112:1.) Everywhere in the Scriptures, people of this sort who are terrified by the word of God are encouraged and comforted. For they despair of themselves, and the word of God does its work in them by causing them to tremble before God. Just as those who are hardened toward the word of God and rely on themselves have a very bad sign in that they are of this mind, so they who stand in anxious fear of it have a very good sign precisely in this their attitude, as it is written in Ps. 144:6: "Shoot out thy arrows and thou shalt trouble them."
Therefore, if a man is overwhelmed by the fear that he is not one of the elect or if he is assailed and troubled about his election, let him give thanks for such fear and let him rejoice over his anxiety: he can be confident in the knowledge that God cannot lie who said: "The sacrifice of God is a troubled," i.e., a desperate,
"spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise" (Ps. 51:17). Now, he himself is aware of the fact that he is
"troubled." He should be bold, therefore, and unhesitatingly rely on God's truthfulness and accept his promise and thus free himself from his former notion that God only frightens, and thus he will be saved and elected.69
It is certainly not characteristic of the reprobate, at least in this life, that they tremble at the hidden counsel of God, but this is
6 7 "Per antiperistasin" i.e., contrarii circumstantiam.
VIII. Webster calls "antiperistasis" a term of Old Physics and defines it as an "opposition by which the quality opposed acquires strength."
6 8 Luther actually thinks of Isa. 35:4.
69 "Ergo in veritatem promittentis Dei audacter ruat (se transferat) de pres* cientia terrentis Dei, et salvus et electus eriU"
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT characteristic of the elect. For the reprobate despise it and do not pay any attention to it. Or they say with the presumptuousness of despair: If I am damned, all right, let me be damned.
Now there are three ranks in the company of the elect.
To the first one belong those who are content with the will oJ God, whatever it is; they do not grumble against it, but trust, rather, that they are elected, and they do not want to be damned.
To the second one, which is higher, belong those who have resigned themselves to God's will. They feel content in it or at least they yearn for such a feeling, in case God should not want to save them but place them among the rejected.
To the third and the best and highest rank belong those who in actual reality resign themselves to hell if God wills this, as it happens perhaps with many in the hour of death. These are perfectly cleansed of their own will and of the "prudence of the flesh." They know what it means that "love is strong as death and jealousy as hard as hell" (S. of Sol. 8:6). A wonderfully strange comparison! Love is compared with the bitterest things, inasmuch as it is seemingly something soft and sweet. But it is true: love that finds pleasure in another is sweet, because it enjoys the beloved.
In this world, God gives such a love to his elect briefly and sparingly, for to possess it richly and for long is, indeed, a most dangerous thing, "for they have received their reward" (Matt. 6:2).
But a love that is full of longing, such a love is really as hard and as strong as hell, and, in this life, God exercises his elect in it in wonderfully strange ways. So the bride says in the Song of Solomon: "I am sick with love." (S. of Sol. 2:5.)
Hence, we must always take the word "love" to mean a cross and suffering, as this passage shows. "Without these the soul becomes languid and tepid; it ceases to long for him and does not thirst for him, the living fountain. This love is sweet, to be sure, not when it passively receives, but when it actively gives, or, to put it crudely, it is sweet to its object, but it is bitter to its subject. For it wishes others everything that is good and gives it to them, but it takes upon itself the ills of all as if they were its own. For "it seeks not its own and bears all things and endures all things." (I Cor. 13:
GLOSSES ON ROM. 8:18-30 [The interlinear gloss on Rom. 8:18-30 is given first, and the mar* ginal glosses are indicated by numbers within parentheses.]
For I reckon, inasmuch as they are really not worthy, that the sufferings (1), i.e., tribulations, of this time, because they are so small and LUTHER! LECTURES ON ROMANS insignificant, are not worthy to be compared with the glory already prepared with God, but not yet revealed, which shall be revealed in us, the elect. For the earnest expectation (because of the fact that, held captive as it were, it serves the unworthy) of the creature, i.e., of what is in process of being formed as the work of the maker, which is the whole world, waits (2) for the revelation (in the resurrection and glorification) of the sons of God. It longs for it. But, we ask, why does it long for it? For the creature was made subject to, i.e., it serves, vanity, i.e., the vain use of the wicked, not willingly, not by its own will but from necessity, but by reason of him, God, who has subjected the same, i.e., has caused it to serve unworthy men, (3) in hope, because the creature itself (Matt. 24:35: "heaven and earth shall pass away")
(4) also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption, in which it serves corruptibly, into an incorruptible bondage, yes, into liberty, namely, into the liberty of glory, (5) i.e., to the glory of the children of God. For this its bondage shall become its liberty, just as we must say of the righteous that they are transferred from the bondage of sin into the bondage of righteousness, or, rather, into the liberty of righteousness. For to be in bondage to God means to rule like a king. (Quia servire Deo regnare est. Cf. Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 55:2; De vera relig., 44, 82.) For we know that the whole creature, because, as it is said farther on (Rom. 8:28), "to the elect all things work together/' groans for the redemption and the glory of the children of God and its own (6) and travails in pain (7) until now, but has not yet brought them forth. And not only it (this is not in the Greek text) but ourselves also, the believers, the elect, who have the first fruits of the Spirit (8) but not yet the fullness of it and the whole harvest or vintage, because we are "the beginning of his creatures" (James 1:18). For we shall be the perfect that is to come, according to I John 3:2: "Now we are the sons of God and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is/' even we ourselves groan, i.e., groaningly ask and pray within ourselves, i.e., in ourselves, where only God can see, for the adoption (of the sons of God) (this is not part of the text) waiting, weary of the present life and longing for the life to come; for the redemption of our body (9) from mortality to immortality, from corruption into glory. For we are saved by the hope in which "we wait."
But hope unto eternal salvation, that which we wait for by hoping, (hope, I say,) that is seen is not hope (hence, he explains himself,) for what a man sees, why does he hope for?, for he has and holds it in his hands. But if we hope for that which we see not and neither have nor hold, then we wait with patience for it, for hope that is deferred discourages the soul. Likewise the Holy Spirit also helps, by causing us to pray with deep groanings, our infirmity (10) (the Greek text reads:
"our infirmities"), our impotence and inability. For we know not (as we read in Matt. 20:22: "You know not what you ask," and in John
13:7: "What I do, you now do not know") what, in so far as the object of our prayer is concerned, we should pray for as we ought, in so far
ROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT as the attitude and manner of our prayer are concerned; but the Holy Spirit asks for us, makes intercession for us, with groanings that cannot be uttered, that no man can express in words and none except
God can feel. (11) This does not apply in the same way to everyone.
But God alone, i.e., he that searches the hearts of men, knows and recognizes our inmost selves even more than we ourselves do, and he senses and approves (12) what the Holy Spirit longs for (and to him they are not unutterable). He knows, I say, because he asks, makes intercession, for the saints according to God, i.e., because this is pleasing to God according to his will, for, as he said before, the whole creature and we ourselves and the Holy Spirit groan together for the saints; this he proves now by saying: And we know, I say this lest it appear strange that the Spirit himself intercedes, that to them that love God all things, good as well as bad ones, work together (13) for good, i.e., for the coming of salvation, to them who according to the purpose (14) are called, according to predestination, for not all are called according to predestination, because "many are called, but few are chosen" (Matt.
20:16) saints (this is not in the Greek text). According to his purpose, then, they are called, for whom he foreknew, whom he knew before they came into being, he also predestinated, (15) predetermined, singled out, selected, proposed to be conformed (16) in glory and splendor just as also in suffering and shame to the image and likeness (exemplar) of his Son Jesus Christ, that he might be the first-born, the chief first fruit, the likeness, the image of all among many brethren, i.e., among all the elect who are many (17) in so far as he is man, for, in so far as he is God, he is the only-begotten one who has no brethren. Moreover, whom he predestinated, proposed or elected, them he also called by the word of faith, and whom he called, them he also justified (18) by the spirit of faith; and whom he justified, them he also magnified (which means "glorified"), i.e., glorified in eternal life.
(1) The sufferings are worthy or unworthy, not because we estimate them to be so; but our judgment of them is then right and true when we evaluate them in terms of what they really are. And this the proud do not do.
(2) He speaks of the creature, as if, alive and able to have sensations, it felt pain at being forced for such a long time to serve the wicked in misuse and ingratitude toward God, while in fact it was created to the end that, through it and in it, the saints might glorify God. It is for this its end ("finem") that it naturally ("naturaliter") waits.
(3) Matt. 5:45: "For he makes his sun to rise on the good and the evil and sends rain on the just and the unjust."
(4) This is the same as to say, "Heaven and earth shall pass" (Matt.
24:35), not in terms of their substance but in terms of their corruptibility. The philosophers may see how they can understand this! I understand the text to say: not in terms of their substance, i.e., not that they may cease to be, but that they may no longer be corruptible, but that they may be glorious. The word "they will pass," i.e., "they will be changed" (cf. Ps. 102:26), indicates this. Just as Christ passed
LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS through his Passover ("transiit phase suo"), i.e., as he was changed into the glory of immortality, so all saints are called Galileans, i.e., those that pass, i.e., those that are to be changed into glory. As it says in II Peter 3:13: "We look for a new heaven and a new earth," etc. And in Isa. 65:17: 'Tor behold, I create new heavens and a new earth"; and in Ps. 102:26 and 27: "They shall perish . . . and thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed."
(5) Again he contrasts (as is his wont) "the bondage of corruption" and "the liberty of glory," for it now serves in its corruption to the misuse of the wicked, but then, when it will be set free from corruption, it will serve "to the glory of the children of God."
(6) Note here what a great prayer is continuously said for the righteous and against the unrighteous, as the whole creature groans for its own deliverance and that of the righteous, thereby crying out against the unrighteous; then we come and groan, and finally also the Spirit himself.
(7) "It travails," i.e., it strives anxiously for the end of corruption, in order to bring forth glory, just as a woman in labor has sorrow, but when she has delivered her child, she does not remember her anguish
(8) He speaks here in a metaphor suggested by the first fruits of the produce of the earth—the beginning of the harvest, as it were, or the foretaste of the vintage that is to come.
(9) Those who have the spirit of fear do not understand all this, but they dread it and do not want it to happen.
(10) Because man, no matter how righteous he is, does not wish fervently enough, in reliance on his own powers, for the glory that is to come. Therefore, the Spirit asks in their stead with hidden sighs for what men cannot pray for. For also when we pray for eternal glory and ask that it may come soon or that it may be given thus and so, we do not know what to pray for, in view of the possibility that when it is given as we ask or if it comes soon, it may cause us a great loss. How much more does this apply to prayers for temporal things!
(11) In other words: the groaning is so heavy that only God can weigh it and properly sense it, as it is said in Ps. 38:9: "All my desire is before thee, and my groaning is not hid from thee."
(12) As in Ps. 1:6: "For the Lord knows the way of the righteous."
(13) The Greek text reads "he works together," in the singular, and this is better, because the reference is to the Holy Spirit. The meaning, then, is this: it is not strange that he intercedes for us, because he works all things together with the saints in all they do. The word is an explanation of the preceding: "he intercedes." In other words: he prays with us just as he acts together with us in everything else.
(14) He says simply "according to the purpose," without adding "of God" or "his." For there is, indeed, only one purpose, namely, God's, as all who know God understand. For only God's and no one else's purpose is realized and accomplished. The whole creature must be conROMANS, CHAPTER EIGHT formed to him, according to Judith 16:14: "Let thy creation serve thee."
(15) God does not create and save with his eyes closed as Jacob saw his father do in the prefiguration of his predestination (Gen. 48:17 ff.).
(16) The passage must be read as follows: Whom he foreknew to be conformed, them he also predestinated to be conformed. If he had meant to say that God had foreknown that they would become such by their own merits, he would have written: For of whom he foreknew that they would become conformed.
(17) "Many" is here said with positive emphasis. It must not be taken to mean that Christ is the first-born among many brethren but not among all. For it is written in Ps. 89:6: "Who among the sons of God is like God?" The meaning, then, is this: He is the first-born among all his brethren, who are very many as it says above in Rom.
5:19: "The many shall be made righteous."
(18) He does not glorify all whom he justifies, and he does not justify all whom he calls, and he does not call all whom he has foreknown. Hence, the apostle fashions this sequence here only with respect to the predestined, namely, with respect to those "whom he foreknew to be conformed."