Since the time of Augustine, when legalism succeeded in fastening itself upon the church's teaching and practice, the church has been caught in the bondage of legalism. For a brief moment at the Reformation this bondage was broken when Martin Luther rediscovered the meaning of the righteousness of God in Paul's letter to the Romans. This discovery was made at the end of a long and troubled search which began when at the age of 21, on July 17, 1505, Luther applied for admission to the monastery of the Augustinian Friars known as the Black Cloister because of their black habit. They were also known as the Augustinian Hermits. Having recently been made a Master of Arts at the University of Erfurt, Martin had gone home to Mansfeld on a vacation during the month of June, 1505. On July 2, when returning to Erfurt from Mansfeld, at a distance of about five miles from his university, close to the village of Stotternheim, he was overtaken by a thunderstorm. When one of the lightning bolts nearly struck him, he cried out in terror, "Help, St. Anne, and I'll become a monk." Later, in his DeVotis Monasticis ("Concerning Monastic Vows," 1521) Luther explains his state of mind at that time.
"I was called to this vocation by the terrors of heaven,Accordingly, he sold his books, bade farewell to his friends, and entered the monastery.
for neither willingly nor by my own desire did I become a monk;
but, surrounded by the terror and agony of a sudden death,
I vowed a forced and unvoidable vow." [1]
Luther observed the canonical regulations as prescribed in the constitution of the Observatine section of the Augustinian Order of Mendicant Monks. He says:
"I was an earnest monk, lived strictly and chastely,The purpose of it all was justification, being righteous with God.
would not have taken a penny without the knowledge of the prior,
prayed diligently day and night." [2]"I kept vigil night by night, fasted, prayed,
chastised and mortified my body, was obedient,
and lived chastely." [3]
"When I was a monk, I exhausted myself by fasting,But all these observances did not bring peace to his troubled conscience. He says:
watching, praying, and other fatiguing labors.
I seriously believed that I could secure
justification through my works... [4]"It is true that I have been a pious monk,
and followed my rules so strictly that I may say,
if ever a monk could have gained heaven through monkery,
I should certainly have got there.
This all my fellow-monks who have known me will attest." [5]
"I was often frightened by the name of Jesus,Later in 1545 in the famous autobiographical fragment with which he prefaced the Latin edition of his complete works, Luther thus described his feelings:
and when I looked at him hanging on the cross,
I fancied that he seemed to me like lightning.
When I heard his name mentioned,
I would rather have heard the name of the devil,
for I thought that I had to perform good works
until at last through them Jesus would become merciful to me.
In the monastery I did not think about money,
worldly possessions, nor women, but my heart shuddered
when I wondered when God should become merciful to me." [6]
"For however irreproachably I lived as a monk,
I felt myself in the presence of God
to be a sinner with a most unquiet conscience,
nor could I believe that I pleased him with my satisfactions.
I did not love, indeed I hated this just God,
if not with open blasphemy, at least with huge murmurings,
for I was indignant against him, saying,
'as if it were really not enough for God
that miserable sinners should be eternally lost through original sin,
and oppressed with all kind of calamities
through the law of the ten commandments,
but God must add sorrow on sorrow,
and even by the gospel bring his wrath to bear.'
Thus I raged with a fierce and most agitated conscience...." [7]
These inward, spiritual difficulties were intensified by a theological problem. This was the concept of the "righteousness of God" [justitia Dei]. His religious background made him intensely aware of the judgment of God, and he learned the Greek concept of justice as found in book 5 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Thus encouraged by the use of justitia in Gabriel Biel and other nominalists, he thought of God's justice as being primarily the active, punishing severity of God against sinners as he explains in his exposition of Psalm 51:14 in 1532:
"This term "righteousness" really caused me much trouble.This conception blocked his understanding of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans.
They generally explained that righteousness is the truth
by which God deservedly condemns or judges those who have merited evil.
In opposition to righteousness they set mercy,
by which believers are saved.
This explanation is most dangerous, besides being vain,
because it arouses a secret hate against God and His righteousness.
Who can love Him if He wants to deal with sinners according to righteousness?" [8]
"All the while I was aglow with the desire
to understand Paul in his letter to the Romans.
But... the one expression in chapter one (v.17)
concerning the "righteousness of God" blocked the way for me.
For I hated the expression "righteousness of God"
since I had been instructed by the usage custom of all teachers
to understand it according to scholastic philosophy
as the "formal or active righteousness" in which God
proves Himself righteous by punishing sinners and the unjust..." [9]
But God used this passage to change his understanding of the righteousness of God and to solve his inward, spiritual difficulties.
"Finally, after days and nights of wrestling with the difficulty,
God had mercy on me,
and then I was able to note the connection of the words
'righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel'
and 'just shall live by faith.'
Then I began to understand the 'righteousness of God' is
that through which the righteous lives by the gift (dono) of God,
that is, through faith, and that the meaning is this:
The Gospel reveals the righteousness of God in a passive sense,
that righteousness through which 'the just shall live by faith.'
Then I felt as if I had been completely reborn
and had entered Paradise through widely opened doors.
Instantly all Scripture looked different to me.
I passed through the Holy Scriptures,
so far as I was able to recall them from memory,
and gathered a similar sense from other expressions.
Thus the 'work of God' is that which God works in us;
the 'strength of God' is that through which He makes us strong;
the 'wisdom of God' is that through which He makes us wise;
and the 'power of God,' and 'blessing of God,' and 'honor of God,'
are expressions used in the same way."As intensely as I had formerly hated the expression "righteousness of God"
I now loved and praised it as the sweetest of concepts;
and so this passage of Paul was actually the portal of Paradise to me." [10]
This discovery not only brought peace to Luther's troubled conscience but it was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Luther's protest against the errors of the Roman church stems from this discovery. But his discovery was lost by those who came after him, the Protestant scholastics. Because the explanation of the death of Christ was still grounded in the legalistic concept of justice, that is, that Christ died to pay the penalty for man's sin which the justice of God requires to be paid before God can save man, Luther's discovery of the Biblical understanding of the righteousness of God was obscured and eventually lost.
[1] Quoted in Albert Hyma, New Light on Martin Luther
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1958), p.16.
[2] Luther, Commentary on the Gospel of John, ch. VI-VIII,
Weimer ed., XXXIII, 561. Dated October 21, 1531, quoted in Hyma, p. 28.
[3] Luther, op. cit.,
dated October 28, 1531, p. 574, quoted in Hyma, p. 28.
[4] Luther, Exposition on Psa. XLV, 226. Quoted in Hyma, p. 29.
[5] Luther, Answer to Duke George's Latest Book, p. 143, quoted in Hyma, pp. 28-29.
[6] Luther, Sermon on Matthew XVIII-XXIV, quoted in Hyma, pp. 29-30.
[7] Library of Christian Classics, Vol. XV,
Luther: Lectures on Romans
(Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1961), pp. xxxvi-xxxvii.
[8] What Luther Says, Vol.III, Compiled by Ewald M. Plass
(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959), p. 1225.
[9] What Luther Says, Vol. III, pp. 1225-1226.