Copyright © 1994, Word & World, Luther
Seminary.Word & World, Supplement Series 2, pp. 57-65.
First published in The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg
Bulletin 55/1 (1975) pp. 3-11, and delivered first at the 1974
Martin Luther Colloquium. Used with permission.
[1] It is part of the conventional wisdom that the reformation
was based upon the assertion of freedom of conscience, the
autonomous human conscience against the heteronomy of church and
state. The illustration generally used in order to support this
claim is Luther's celebrated appearance at the Diet of Worms.
Standing before emperor and pope's representative he said:
Since then your serene
majesty and your lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in
this manner, neither horned nor toothed: Unless I am convinced by
the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not
trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well
known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves) I am
bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive
to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything, since
it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience (Cum contra
conscientiam agere neque tutum neque integrum sit).[1]
[2] Even if Luther never said, "Ich kan nicht anders, hie stehe
Ich, Got helff mir, amen,"[2] the
emphasis upon conscience in his defense has never been questioned.
But while there is considerable agreement on the significance of
conscience for Luther's theology and ethics, the character of this
significance is the focus of a major debate. One of the most
important Luther scholars of the twentieth century, Karl Holl,
claimed in his seminal essay, "What Did Luther Understand by
'Religion'?":
Luther's religion is a "religion of conscience" in the most
pronounced sense of the word, with all the urgency and the personal
character belonging to it. It issues from a particular kind of
conscientious experience-namely, his unique experience of the
conflict between a keen sense of responsibility and the
unconditional, absolute validity of the divine will-and rests on
the conviction that in the sense of obligation (sollen), which
impresses its demands so irresistibly upon the human will, divinity
reveals itself most clearly.[3]
[3] This meant that the "voice of conscience" was seen as the
point of contact between God's revelation and the human being. This
gave conscience an essentially positive meaning in line with the
scholastic tradition of synteresis, the divine spark in the human
being after the fall. Emmanuel Hirsch has pointed out that it was
Peter Abelard who had first called attention to the importance of
conscience for ethics and who saw Paul's struggle for justification
by grace through faith essentially as a struggle for the lex
naturalis against the lex scripta, for rationalism against
legalism. Abelard's natural law rationalism was summarized in the
sentence, "The words of the natural law are those who command love
of God and love of the neighbor."[4] For the
development of Christian ethics it is significant that Abelard
discovered the natural law written into the human heart in the
conscience. To sin is to act against conscience. And this became
the accepted opinion in the schools. But this insight, which might
have led to the advocacy of freedom of conscience, resulted in the
opposite by its subordination to the law. Biel said: "Conscience is
the herald of the law."[5] Hirsch
summarizes the medieval development which Luther eventually
confronted under two headings: (1) Conscience is always subject to
law. It binds conscience and is never independent of it. (2)
Conscience is not an originally religious experience. Rather it is
the experience of oneself. "The ultimate height and depth of the
encounter with God are independent of the
conscience."[6]
[4] It is against this background that we must understand
Luther's appeal to conscience in Worms and also the disregard of
this appeal by the secretary to the archbishop of Trier who
shouted: "Lay aside your conscience, Martin; you must lay it aside
because it is in error."[7] By
Luther's time a conscience which opposes the law of God out of
ignorance or error must simply be put aside. Unlike Abelard, who
had daringly asserted that if the Jews followed their conscience in
crucifying Jesus they did not sin, properly
speaking,[8] later scholastics deny the
possibility of a conscience which through error involves of
necessity in sin. The priest who speaks within the limits of the
pastoral office overrules the erring conscience.[9]
[5] For Thomas, synteresis is the guarding or keeping of the
natural principles of the moral law, the habit of understanding
these primary principles or precepts.[10] Conscience is then the
ability (habitus) to act according to law. It can be used almost in
the same sense as reason (ratio vel conscientia). A command of
conscience and a command of reason can be the same thing. Thomas
Aquinas proposes that in matters of faith the synteresis is
inapplicable since the light of reason does not suffice for the
comprehension of matters of faith.[11]
[6] It was this tradition which Luther reflected in his earliest
comments on conscience. In 1509 he wrote in the margin of St.
Augustine's De Trinitate, where Augustine reflects on John 1:4, on
the light which shines in human beings and enables them to live and
move and have their being in God, "It appears that this light is
our synteresis."[12] Here Luther clearly
affirms synteresis as a valuable gift of God to human beings. And
similarly in a 1516 comment on Tauler's fifty‑second sermon
he sees a reference to synteresis in Tauler's description of the
word of God speaking to the soul. Synteresis reveals that God is
closer to the soul than it is to itself.[13]
[7] In a sermon of 1514 Luther distinguished two kinds of
synteresis, the synteresis voluntatis and the synteresis
rationis,[14] but as Hirsch has
observed, he uses synteresis in order to understand the
contradiction in human beings between the will and reason designed
to enable them to serve God, and the factual opposition between
human will and reason and God. This aptitude is not able to
determine the human will and understanding. As early as his Romans
commentary he questions the general aptitude as well and
writes:
The common saying that human
nature in a general and universal way knows and wills the good but
errs and does not will it in particular cases would be better
stated if we were to say that in particular cases human nature
knows and wills what is good but in general neither knows nor wills
it. The reason is that it knows nothing but its own good, or what
is good and honorable and useful for itself, but not what is good
for God and other people. Therefore it knows and wills more what is
particular, yes, only what is an individual good. And this is in
agreement with Scripture, which describes man as so turned in on
himself that he uses not only physical but even spiritual goods for
his own purposes and in all things seeks only
himself.[15]
[8] The significant difference between Luther's view of
synteresis and conscience from the tradition which he had inherited
is the essentially accusing function of both. While conscientia was
traditionally understood in relation to specific actions and could
be either accusing or excusing, synteresis, as we have observed
above, was the natural inclination of the soul towards the good, an
inextinguishable spark (scintilla) of reason. For Luther even the
effect of synteresis could best be described as "the worm"
(vermis), and "murmuring" of a guilty conscience.[16] It is therefore dubious
whether for Luther synteresis or conscience are ever the thoroughly
positive force, that, for example Erich Seeberg describes in
Luther, "the unformed instinct of the soul for God, to be formed by
the will and intellect."[17]
[9] Against this conscience interpretation of Karl Holl and his
disciples, Ernst Wolf[18] is
correct in his insistence that (1) Luther denies any formation of a
constant, essential core of the human being through God's word. On
the contrary he says,
this word "formed"
(formatum) is under a curse, for it forces us to think of the soul
as being the same after as before the outpouring of love and as if
the form were merely added to it at the time of the action,
although it is necessary that it be wholly put to death and be
changed before putting on love and working in love.[19]
[10] Continuity would deny that the Christian is a new
creature. (2) Luther rejects the notion that there is a constant
core of the human being which constitutes the connection between
the unformed and the newly formed conscience. (3)Finally, he
refused to consider this alleged core as the instrument by which
the human being encounters the divine demand. The encounter with
Christ, not the experience of an irresistible divine demand,
results in the presence of God, existence coram deo. Friedrich
Gogarten states this point forcefully when he writes:
Conscience, as Luther
understands it and as it occupies a central place in his theology,
is precisely where faith must take up the struggle against ethics
as the attempt to bring the relationship to God under the control
of the human being. In dealing with conscience we deal with the
human being as he really is. But not as he is lord over himself
through his ethical self‑understanding and thus autonomously
confronts the world, but as he is delivered into the power of the
authorities which rule the world.[20]
[11] Who are these authorities? For Luther they are law, death,
and devil, and his understanding of conscience must be seen in
relationship to these authorities which it serves.[21] As he wrote in De Votis
Monasticis in 1521:
For conscience is not the
power to do works, but to judge them. The proper work of conscience
(as Paul says in Romans 2 [:15]), is to accuse or excuse, to make
guilty or guiltless, uncertain or certain. Its purpose is not to
do, but to pass judgment on what has been done and what should be
done, and this judgment makes us stand accused or saved in God's
sight.[22]
I. Conscience and Law
[12] For Luther the proper use of the law is "to make guilty
those who are smug and at peace, so that they may see that they are
in danger of sin, wrath, and death, so that they may be terrified
and despairing, blanching, and quaking at the rustling of a leaf
(Lev 26:6)."[23] The place where the law
encounters the human being is in the conscience:
For the law does nothing but
accuse consciences and manifest sin, which is dead without the law.
The knowledge of sin-I am not speaking about the speculative
knowledge which hypocrites have, but I am speaking about the
knowledge in which the wrath of God against sin is perceived and a
true taste of death is sensed-this knowledge terrifies hearts,
drives them to despair and kills them.[24]
[13] The result of the encounter of conscience and law is
Angst, what Tillich has called the moral and ethical anxiety of
guilt and condemnation.24b For Luther the law is not something
artificial, something contrived by church or state, family or peer
group, in order to socialize a human being. Rather it is a reality
which confronts people in their utter loneliness even after church
and state, family and peer group have given him a clean bill of
health. It is the devastating abyss that opens up between our
actuality and our potentiality which condemns us even if others
might acquit us. This was Luther's experience, and neither the good
will of his father nor the approval of his superior in the monastic
order, nor the respect of his peer group which elected him to high
office in the monastery was able to bridge the abyss which
terrified his heart.
II. Conscience and Death
[14] The horizon against which this terror is experienced is
death. In a sermon on Matt 26:36‑46 Luther said: "At times
sin rages and raves in the heart to such a degree that poor
miserable people put themselves to death because of it, in an
effort to get rid of this torture of conscience....These poor
people consider death a means to free themselves from such anxiety
(Angst)."[25]
[15] And again preaching on 1 Cor 15:56 in 1533 he said: "For it
is impossible for man to endure a bad conscience when it really
lays hold of him and he begins to feel God's wrath. Thus we see
some people dying suddenly or committing suicide because of such
terror and despair."[26]
[16] As it is Luther's custom, he personalizes the powers which
meet human beings. While we-until recently, at least-tended to
depersonalize the devil, Luther personalizes not only the devil but
also the law and death. They are not abstract impersonal forces but
concrete, personal, even tangible enemies which meet us face to
face in our life. In this approach Luther does not stand alone. His
contemporary Albrecht Dürer, in his famous woodcut of the
knight, death, and the devil, does the same thing. And two hundred
years later Bach can sing "Komm süsser Tod" ["Come sweet
death"], personalizing the power in a similar way.
[17] And death meets the individual in her or his conscience.
The emphasis is here quite properly on the "individual." For
Luther, death accentuates the loneliness of the person confronted
by the ultimate threat to personal being. In On Temporal Authority
he wrote, "every man runs his own risk in believing as he does, and
he must see to it himself that he believes rightly. As nobody else
can go to heaven or hell for me, so nobody else can believe or
disbelieve for me."[27] Even
pastoral support and the comfort of fellow Christians is finally
cut off. As he wrote in 1522: "Therefore, imagine that you are
facing death or persecution. I cannot be with you then, nor you
with me, but each one of us must then struggle for himself to
overcome the devil and death and the world."[28]
[18] As Luther reminded the people when he returned from the
Wartburg in 1522 to restore a semblance of order in Wittenberg:
The summons of death comes
to us all and no one can die for another. Everyone must fight his
own battle with death by himself, alone. We can shout into
another's ears, but everyone must himself be prepared for the time
of death, for I will not be with you then, nor you with
me.[29]
[19] Because I must die and must die alone, the accusing power
of conscience is ultimately threatening, indeed because I must die,
I fear the accusing conscience, and because I fear the accusing
conscience, I want to die. Death and the wrath of God confront us
together. Death is an enemy who threatens to devour us, not an
objective phenomenon which can be observed and studied. It may be
that also-but then it is the death of others. I meet it, Luther
says, like the disciples in the storm‑tossed
boat.[30] Or as the lonely Peter,
when, confronted by the high priest's servant, he denies Christ
three times out of fear of death. But his conscience makes him
aware of his hopeless situation and drives his sin into his heart.
Luther observes: "If Peter was not grey and bald before, in these
three days he became grey and bald."[31]
III. Conscience and the Devil
[20] "Such an evil beast and wicked devil is conscience. For all
authors, sacred and profane, have depicted this monster in horrible
fashion."[32] This illustrates the
close connection Luther sees between conscience and devil. In the
discussion of Luther's demonology his personification of the devil
is generally taken out of the context of his personification of all
the powers surrounding the human being and attacking him in his
conscience and driving him to despair. The devil is part of this
conspiracy.
[21] For Luther the conscience can be an instrument of the
devil, the device to make his assaults, his Anfechtungen, real.
Here law and death become allies of the devil trying to make the
sinner rely on his or her own good works and accomplishments. But
relying on their own righteousness human beings are lost and driven
into sadness. He writes:
Therefore we should be on
our guard, lest the amazing skill and infinite wiles of Satan
deceive us into mistaking the accuser and condemner for the
Comforter and Savior, and thus losing the true Christ behind the
mask of the false Christ, that is, of the devil, and making Him of
no advantage to us.[33]
[22] Or later, "You soon lose your red lips and red cheeks,
forget to dance and leap, because the devil is a spirit of sadness
(spiritus tristitiae)."[34]
Indeed, death and devil sometimes tend to merge, and Luther can say
that we must "battle with death and death's prince or chief, the
devil."[35] And the devil promotes
the justitia personalis, and then calls into question our alleged
purity and holiness. Luther wrote: "That is the devil's art which
he frequently tries on me. He asks me how godly or how evil are
you, and uses masterfully Scripture and law in this
interrogation...and he brings people to such anxiety that one wants
to despair."[36] And elsewhere:
Therefore you must make
thorough preparations not only for the time of temptation but also
for the time and struggle of death. Then your conscience will be
terrified by the recollection of your past sins. The devil will
attack you vigorously and will try to swamp you with piles, floods,
and whole oceans of sins, in order to frighten you, draw you away
from Christ, and plunge you into despair.[37]
[23] The devil uses the conscience to drive human beings into
despair, thus making the guilty conscience a "fierce and savage
beast."[38]
[24] For Luther, conscience is the place where the law, death,
and the devil encounter the human being and drive him into despair.
The guilty conscience is one of the most terrifying human
experiences. But this is not Luther's final word on conscience. As
early as his Romans commentary, he could also say "He who believes
in Christ is secure in his conscience and righteous and, as the
Scripture says, 'bold as a lion'(Prov. 28:1)."[39] In 1513 in an exposition
of Psalm 118 he wrote: "Where could there be a higher or greater
joy than in a happy, secure, and fearless conscience, a conscience
that trusts in God and fears neither the world nor the
devil?"[40] In a sermon preached at
Leipzig in 1519 Luther had said:
One must know how one stands
with God, if the conscience is to be joyful and be able to stand.
For when a person doubts this and does not steadfastly believe that
he has a gracious God, then he actually does not have a gracious
God. As he believes so he has. Therefore no one can know that he is
in grace and that God is gracious toward him except through faith.
If he believes it, he is saved; if he does not believe it, he is
damned. For this confidence (zuvorsicht) and good conscience is the
real, basically good faith, which the grace of God works in
us.[41]
[25] The secret for Luther is to look to Christ and not to
Moses, the gospel not the law. In a sermon of 1532 he said:
Christ offers us such
freedom that we must simply tolerate no master over our conscience
but insist on our baptism and as people called to Christ and made
righteous and holy through him say, "This is my right, my treasure,
my work and my defense against all sin and unrighteousness (which
the law can produce and lay upon me)"....Thus a person can defend
himself against the suggestions and assaults of the devil, whether
these concern present or former sins. The point is to keep Moses
and Christ, works and faith, external life and conscience apart.
When the law would get to me and terrify my heart it is time to
give the dear law a vacation, and if it does not want a vacation
confidently drive it away and say, "I shall gladly do and demand
good works in due season wherever I can when I am among people. But
here in my conscience I want to know nothing of such matters. Leave
me here untroubled and tell me nothing of it. Here I listen neither
to Moses nor the Pharisees. Here baptism and Christ must rule alone
and be everything."[42]
[26] The traditional teaching concerning conscience which Luther
had inherited had insisted that conscience is always subject to
law. Law binds conscience; also conscience is not an originally
religious experience, rather it is the experience of
oneself.[43] Luther claimed that the
conscience is only secure if it is free from the law and totally
subject to Christ, and that only an encounter with Christ can free
our conscience from its fatal involvement with law, death, and
devil. As long as we operate with an independent conscience it will
only produce anxiety and despair. Paul Tillich in his description
of the various anxieties which human beings experience-fate and
death, guilt and condemnation, emptiness and meaningless-seems very
close to Luther's description of the effect of conscience on
humanity.[44]
[27] Indeed, conscience produces Angst. But Angst does not
provide a sound basis for responsible Christian ethics. Luther is
aware of this and suggests ways in which human beings might find
guidance for the individual and social ethical decisions that they
must make. He says: "When I am among people I shall gladly do and
demand good works" (see note 42). Here the law in its political use
is an important positive instrument. And this law is essentially
the law of love. For Luther, faith is active in love, and love is
active in justice. The structures which must be developed and
cultivated for this are the varieties of human vocations which
enable all human beings to be at least moderately useful to each
other, in spite of selfishness and sin. And ultimately it is human
reason, much maligned by Luther, which, while impotent and even
dangerous when attempting to attain God, serves human beings well
in their necessary and inescapable attempts to construct a humane
society. Indeed, as he wrote in his Galatians commentary of
1535:
"Our politeuma is in
heaven," not in a local sense, but to the extent that a Christian
believes, to that extent he is in heaven; and to the extent that he
does his duty in faith, to that extent he is doing it in
heaven....Therefore the spiritual and heavenly blessings must be
distinguished from the earthly blessings, which is to have a good
government (politiam) and household (oeconomiam), to have children,
peace, wealth, food and other physical advantages. But the heavenly
blessing is to be set free from the law, sin, and death; to be
justified and made alive; to have a gracious God; to have a
confident heart, a joyful conscience (conscientiam hilarem)
[italics mine], and spiritual comfort; to have knowledge of Christ,
the gift of prophecy, and the revelation of the Scriptures; to have
the gifts of the Holy Spirit; to rejoice in God, etc.-these are the
heavenly blessings of the church of Christ.[45]
[28] A joyful conscience is a gift, not an achievement. It
belongs with freedom from the law, sin, and death. A wonderful,
unpredictable, and undeserved gift, it cannot be used as the basis
of ethics. And Luther refused to do so. He built his ethics on law
interpreted by love, as illustrated in his explanation to the Ten
Commandments in the Small Catechism, and on justice and equity as
administered by human beings serving in the structures which God
has allowed people to develop for their protection and peace. It is
not because conscience is necessarily a reliable guide to the moral
life that we must respect every person's conscience, but because it
is an essential aspect of humanity. We are not saved by obeying the
dictates of our conscience, but we must obey them nevertheless. In
obeying them we might eventually learn that we are saved by grace
through faith-in spite of our conscience.
© January 2002
Journal of Lutheran Ethics (JLE)
Volume 2, Issue 1
[1] Luther at the Diet of Worms (1521),
LW 32:112
[2] Ibid., 32:113.
[3] K. Holl, What Did Luther Understand
by Religion? (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977) 48.
[4] "Verba autem legis naturalis ea
sunt, quae dei et proximi charitatem commendant." Abelard, in
Migne, Patrologia Latina, 178, 814c, as quoted in E. Hirsch,
Lutherstudien, vol. 1 (Gütersloh: C Bertelsmann, 1954) 13.
[5] "Conscientia vero est quasi praeco
legis," as quoted in Hirsch, 17.
[6] Hirsch, 107.
[7] LW 32:130.
[8] Hirsch, Lutherstudien, 16.
[9] Hirsch, Lutherstudien, 16.
[10] Roy J. Deferrari, A Latin-English
Dictionary of St. Thomas Aquinas (Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1960)
1025
[11] Hirsch, Lutherstudien, 33.
[12] Randbemerkungen Luthers zu
Augustins Schrift de trinitate (1509), WA 9:18
[13] Zu Taulers Predigten (c. 1516),
WA 9:103.
[14] Sermo, De Propria Sapientia et
Voluntate (1514), WA 1:36.
[15] Lectures on Romans (1515), LW
25:345.
[16] First Psalm Lectures (1513-16),
LW 11:389.
[17] Erich Seeberg, Luthers Theologie,
vol. 2 (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1937) 85.
[18] To the following, see Ernst Wolf,
Peregrinatio (Munich: C. Kaiser, 1962) 88ff.
[19] Lectures on Romans (1515), LW
25:325.
[20] To the following, see G. Jacob,
Der Gewissensbegriff in der Theologie Luthers (Tübingen: Mohr,
1929).
[21] To the following, see G. Jacob,
Der Gewissensbegriff in der Theologie Luthers (Tübingen: Mohr,
1929).
[22] The Judgment of Martin Luther on
Monastic Vows (1521), LW 44:298.
[23] Lectures on Galatians (1535), LW
26:148.
[24] Ibid., 148-149.
[25] Hauspostille (1545), WA 52:736,
line 30.
[26] 1 Corinthians 15 (1534), LW
28:208.
[27] LW 45:108.
[28] Receiving Both Kinds in the
Sacrament (1522), LW 36:248.
[29] Fastenpostille (1525), WA
17/2:104.
[30] Fastenpostille (1525), WA
17/2:104.
[31] Sermons (1528), WA 27:110, line
24.
[32] Lectures on Genesis (1535/45), LW
7:271.
[33] 20 Sermons (1533), WA 37:185.
[34] 20 Sermons (1533), WA 37:185.
[35] Psalm 118 (1530), LW 14:85.
[36] Sermons (1532), WA 36:20ff.
[37] Lectures on Galatians (1535), LW
26:35.
[38] Lectures on Genesis (1535-45), LW
1:287.
[39] Lectures on Romans (1515), LW
25:400.
[40] LW 14:100-101.
[41] WA 36:279.
[42] WA 36:279.
[43] Cf. Hirsch, Lutherstudien,
107.
[44] Tillich, The Courage to Be, 32
ff.
[45] LW 26:439-440.