French Calvinism, German Lutheranism and the War
FRENCH CALVINISM, GERMAN LUTHERANISM AND THE WAR.
Introductory Lecture delivered in the University of Edinburgh on 9th October 1917.
(1) The lecture was extemporo. This is the stenographic report taken by my secretary.
The world war has brought us countless tragedies which for generations to come will provide inexhaustible material to dramatic and to epic poets. And the war has also brought us many surprises and many revelations. But the greatest, the most awful tragedy is not the tragedy of Belgium, or of Serbia, and Roumania, or of Poland and Israel: the greatest tragedy is the tragedy of the German people. And the most startling surprise, the most disconcerting revelation is the revelation of the German soul.
By this time we are beginning to understand the workings of the German political and military machine. We have not yet learned to understand the spiritual forces which are behind that machine and which have allowed that formidable machine for four years to resist all the armies of the world. We understand the blunders and crimes of the German rulers. But we do not yet understand how it is that those blunders and crimes have been endorsed and glorified by an absolutely unanimous people. We understand the perversion of the German soul, its duplicity, its uncontrolled passion, its servility, its brutality, but we do not understand the German virtues, or rather we fail to understand how it is that those virtues of the Germans, their self-sacrifice, their passionate faith, their patriotism, their endurance, their patience, their long-suffering, how all those virtues have proved more terrible than their vices, because those virtues have been enlisted in the service of an evil cause. There lies, I submit, the deeper mystery of the German soul.
That mystery, I believe, can only be explained in terms of religion. The old saying: ‘Tell me what you believe and I shall tell you what you are", is true of nations as it is of individuals. It is only the religious conditions of Germany which will give us the key to her tragedy. That German mentality which is so baffling, so bewildering to us, is the result of the subtle working of four hundred years of religion or irreligion. It has taken forty years to build up the German military machine. But it has taken exactly four centuries to build up the German soul. And that German soul was first built up by Luther. Luther, as I am presently going to show and as is admitted and proclaimed by every Patriotic German, is the spiritual father of Prussianism.
It is now exactly four hundred years since Luther affixed his famous propositions on the portals of the Church at Wittenberg. I have no desire to inflict upon my audience a theological disputation. But if it were still the custom of having theological disputations, I would like to affix on the portals of any of the Edinburgh Churches, say, to begin with, the following five historical theses.
My first thesis is that Latheranism has been primarily the insurrection of the Teuton against the Latin, of organised barbarism against civilisation.
My second thesis is that Lutheranism has been the insurrection of the national spirit against the universal Catholic spirit. I am using the word "catholic" in its strict etymological sense.
My third thesis is that Lutheranism has meant the instauration of a religious Caesaro-papism in Northern and Central Europe.
My fourth thesis is that Lutheranism has furthered the instauration of political tyranny.
My fifth thesis is that Lutheranism has not only brought about the breaking up of the unity of Christian civilisation, it has also meant the breaking up, the destroying of the integrity of the German mind.
Let us consider briefly, as far as time and space will permit, those five different propositions.
I.
My first proposition is that Lutheranism means primarily the rebellion of the Teuton against tne Latin, of organised barbarism against civilisation. As a matter of fact, Christianity in the form in which it existed for many centuries had never taken deep root in Northern Germany, it never exceeded the boundary of the advance of the Roman legions. At the time of Luther, Brandenburg was still practically a heathen country. What is to-day the capital of Prussia was not many centuries ago, a village inhabited by Wendish savages. What was to be the Dukedom of Prussia and what was first called into being by the fiat of Luther, remained also very large heathen and was inhabited by a slav population. In the Middle Ages, the Hohenstaufen had waged a continuous fight against the Papacy and against institutional religion. The German mind never understood that in a larger and deeper sense the old Roman Catholic Church as a political institution and as a moral discipline was the synthesis of thousands of years of civilisation. Catholicism had slowly assimilated the religions of the East, the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle, the laws and the politics of Rome, the moral discipiine of the Stoics, the chivalry of Spain, of France and of Great Britain, the political freedom of the city states of the Middle Ages. At the beginning of the 16th century, that process was still going on. The Roman Catholic Church at that time was just passing through a crisis of growth, it was trying once more to assimilate as it had so often done in the past new phenomena of tremendous import, the Renaissance and the New Learning. The Germans did not understand what was implied in the glories of the Renaissance. In the most creative age perhaps of all human civilisation which even then was producing giants like Michael Angelo and Rephael, Lionardo and Titian, Luther could only see the moral corruption of an effete Church. With all the elemental passion of his German soul, he was repelled by and he rebelled against what he assumed to be something essentially pagan, something inherently evil.
We are therefore justified in saying, that Luther's rebellion against Rome was primarily the rebellion of the Teutonic Barbarian against a Latin civilisation which he did not understand.
II.
My second thesis is that Lutheranism is the insurrection of the national spirit in religion against the universal spirit. I need hardly tell my audience that to speak of a national religion is a negation in terms. Religion cannot be nationalised, it cannot be included within territorial barriers. God Almighty cannot be appropriated - although as a matter of fact He has again and again been appropriated - by one particular nation, and although for four hundred years he has been claimed by the Teuton as belonging to him, as being "der alte Deutsche Gott" the old German God. I have to-day the honour of having amongst my audience several distinguished ministers of the Scottish Churches. I am sure they will agree with me that ecclesiastical systems cannot be understood only in terms of abstract and dogmatic theology. A church is a living growth. We must judge it through the ages by the fruits which it produces. Judged by that standard, the Lutheran Church and those Churches which have accepted Lutheran principles nave always and have everywhere developed into national Churches. It has developed in Sweden into a Swedish Church, in Denmark into a Danish Church, in Prussia into a Prussian Church, in England into an Anglican Church. In other words, it is an historical fact that in practice Lutheranism has turned out to be a tribal religion. Everywhere and almost from the beginning it becomes a State Church. This point will become clearer if we examine with a little more detail what is my third proposition, namely that Lutheranism has meant the instauration of religious despotism.
III.
What a strange heresy such a proposition must seem to the average protestant. For is it not the chief claim and glory of Luther that he has been the champion of religious freedom. Are we not told that Germany has been the great Protestant country.
Against such an assumption I would urge that the misfortune of Germany has been that she has never had any genuine Protestantism, and therefore never had any genuine Christianity. For in a political sense, Christianity means the separation of the temporal sphere from the spiritual sphere: give unto God what belongs to God and to Cesar what belongs to Cesar. Against the Christian principle of the separation of the two spheres, the pagan principle is constantly trying to introduce the fusion and confusion of the temporal and the spiritual powers. That pagan confusion has taken many forms. It either takes the "catholic" form of clericalism—i.e. the subordination of the temporal power to the spiritual power. This Catholic clericalism is the less dangerous form, because human nature is so constituted that temporal interests will never allow themselves permanently to be sacrificed to spiritual interests. The real danger arises in the other form of clericalism, it arises in Caesar's papism in the subordination of the spiritual power to the temporal power, because human nature is so constituted that spiritual interests allow themselves only too easily to be sacrificed to temporal interests. The real opposition therefore in religious political history is the opposition between a free Church and a slave Church. The real opposition is not between a catholic church and a protestant church. The word protestant is a messenger. There has been infinitely more genuine Protestantism in the history of the Roman Catholic Church than in the history of all the so-called protestant churches. For Protestantism means the protest of the individual conscience, the assertion of the independence of the spirit as against the encroachments either of the Church or of the State.
In the light of the definitions just given, I submit that the tragedy of Lutheran Germany has been that she has never made any protest. There have been no German Nonconformists, because the Germans have always conformed, they have always been docile, they have often been servile. Historically Lutheranism simply means the substitution of the immediate and ever-present spiritual tyranny of the German princeling for the distant and intermittent spiritual tyranny of the Roman Pope. Luther from political necessity was compelled to seek the support of the German rulers. From the beginning he tried to rouse them against the Papacy and in order to enlist their sympathies, he appealed to their lust of territory and to their lust of power and he held out the alluring bait of the vast confiscated Church properties.
I do not know whether you have ever looked on a religious map of Germany. It is a very queer mosaic. Even to-day you will find all over Germany little Catholic islets entirely surrounded by Protestant territories and other Protestant islets surrounded by Catholic territories. How shall we explain this strange religious mosaic of Germany? The only possible explanation is that the Lutheran Churches were not only national Churches, but territorial, political and dynastic Churches. From the beginning Lutheranism proclaimed the principle that the spiritual allegiance mist follow temporal allegiance. The spiritual power must be subordinated to the temporal power. The territorial principle was embodied in the famous clause of the treaty of Westphalia: “Cujus regio illius religio." That principle explains the lamentable but undoubted fact that the Luther Church speedily degenerated into an Establishment mainly of Junkers and Court Chaplains.
It may be objected that even granting this degeneration of the German Church, the fact still remains that Lutheranism did ultimately result in producing religious toleration. Yes, it did. As in this extraordinary geographical confusion of five hundred Protestant and Catholic principalities, it often happened that Catholic territories by conquest or by dynastic marriages were added to the Protestant territories. After many generations of religious struggle, it became necessary to come to some "modus vivendi." The rival Churches by some sort of arrangement had to live together, they had to agree to differ. As the outcome of practical necessity and of political compromise, as the outcome of exhaustion and indifference, toleration was the inevitable result. In fact the political attitude of degenerate Lutheranism became very much the attitude of Gibbon; "All religions are equally true to the believer, they are equally false to the unbeliever, they are equally useful to the statesmen."
It may be admitted then that historically Lutheranism did produce in Germany a certain amount of toleration. But it was only a negative toleration and it was a very precarious toleration. And one who takes the trouble of studying tne inner history of the German universities and of the German churches will discover constantly recurring cases of intolerance.
Let me quote only three typical illustrations.
In 1783, Kant published his epoch making treatise: Religion within the limits of pure reason. It was the outcome of thirty yeers of meditation. The book wes prohibited by the pietist politicians who were then supreme in Berlin and Emmanuel Kant submitted to the Caesaro papism of Prussia.
A generation after Kant, seven professors of the University of Goettingen, including Jacob Grimm the Father of German philology and German folklore, were dismissed because their ideas were not acceptable to the King of Hanover. The Hanoverian professors did not submit, because Hanover was not Prussia.
In our own days the Chaplain of His Imperial Majesty, Pastor Stoecker, the most influential preacher of Berlin, fell out of favour simply because he dared to preach a form of Christian Socialism which the Kaiser did not approve of. From the moment Stoecker was excommunicated by Willian II, he lost all influence with the people.
In this subservience of the Lutheran Church to the Prussian State you find the explanation of what would otherwise appear absolutely unexplainable namely that servile docility which has characterised the German universities and the German churches, throughout the war. In Great Britain and America there have been pacifists and conscientious objectors ready to suffer for their convictions. But not one single Pastor or Professor within the German Empire has dared to rise and to denounce the crimes of Prussian militarism.
In this connection how different has been the history of German Lutheranism on the one hand and of French Calvinism and Roman Catholicism on the other hand. French Calvinism hes generally made for religious freedom as well as for political freedom. And even Roman Catholicism which is assumed to be necessarily favourable to religious despotism has again and again stood for religious liberty. Let me only refer to the most recent and most memorable illustration. After the Franco-German War the one church which dared to challenge the Iron Chancellor was the German Catholic Church. The Catholic Kulturkampt is the only genuine spiritual protestantism which the German people have known.
IV.
I now come to my fourth proposition, namely that Lutheranism hes always made for political despotism. What may perhaps seem to some of you a paradox is almost implied in the very definition of Lutheranism. It is inconceivable that you can retain for any length of time political liberty where you have the fusion and confusion of temporal and spiritual power. Spiritual power in fact is the only check on temporal despotism. Wherever the two powers are united, you are bound in the long run, to have despotism. And that is exactly what has happened in Lutheran Germany. All the spiritual forces of the nation have been mobilised and enlisted in the service of the State. The State has thus gradually and become the Divine state of Hegel. Just as Luther has created a kind of tribal religion, he has created the national despotic state.
Here again it is interesting to compare Lutheranism on the one hand with Calvinism on the other. What do we find in the history of the Calvinistic Churches? We find that almost everywhere Calvinism develops into a free democracy. First we find that miraculous City State, the little Republic of Geneva, which was founded by the Frenchman Calvin. Second, we find the democratic republics of the Huguenots in France. Third, we find the United Provinces of the Dutch Republic. Fourth, we find the democracy of John Knox in Scotland. Fifth, we have the Commonwealth of Cromwell. Sixth, we find the American Pilgrim Fathers. Seventh, we have the Confession of faith of the Genevese Rousseau, appears as a law of universal history. Eighth, we have the Dutch Calvinistic republic of the Transvaal Boers. We are concerned here with a succession of phenomena which almost always has revealed itself in the Calvinistic principle some elemental democratic force
Or again take the political history of Roman Catholicism. It 1s quite true that if you take only isolated periods and if you only examine the history of Catholic Clericalism which is the negation or true Catholicism, you will come to the conclusion that Catholic Clericalism has been favourable to political despotism. But if you take the history of the Roman Catholic Church during the ages you find that in the great crises of history it is the Roman Catholic Church and the Catholic Church alone that has been able to break the power of political despotism.
Thus the Medieval Popes fought the might and majesty of the Hohenstaufen.
Thus St. Thomas Beckett fought Henry II.
Thus Sir Thomas More and Cardinal Fisher fought the tyranny of Henry VIII.
Thus the Port Royalists challenged the tyranny of Louis XIV.
Thus Pius VII challenged the tyranny of Napoleon I. Thus the nonjuring Catholic Priests challenged the tyranny of Robespierre. Thus in our own day the Catholic German bishops challenged the tyranny of Bismarck. Now this sort of political protest, this sort of Calvinistic protestantism or of catholic protestantism, this sort of political nonconformity has never happened in the Lutheran Churches. And that is why I am entitled to say that Lutheranism has made for political despotism. All religions have been found equally serviceable by the Hohenzollern. As Frederick II the Hohenstaufen Emperor would gather round him a court of Saracens in Sicily, so Frederick II the Hohenzollern King would gather round him a court of cosmopolitan atheists, whilst through a curious paradox he would welcome at the same time to his dominions the Jesuit Fathers expelled by the Roman Pope.
V.
I now come to my fifth proposition against the Lutheran Church. It has broken and destroyed the integrity of the German mind. What the policy of Lutheranism/ Lutheranism began, the theology of Lutheranism has completed. It would be irrelevant to my purpose to discuss here the theological dogma of "justification by faith." My whole point is indeed that the problem of Lutheranism is not a theological problem at all but merely a political problem. The doctrine of justification moreover is neither Lutheran, nor is it specifically Calvinistic or Catholic. You can find it in some form in every Church. But the truly significant and peculiar fact is that in the Lutheran Church it has come to mean the dissociation between faith and works, between religion and lite, between theory and practice. That baffling German mind, to which I several times referred, is working in double compartments. It owes a dual allegiance. The German happens to live in two worlds. He lives in an inner world of emotions and speculations, and he at the same time lives in an outer world of political and social activities. And there is no connecting link between the two worlds.
I would compare that uncanny duality of the German mind and the influence of the Lutheran policy to the working of that mysterious Indian poison which is called "Curare." The effect of Curare is a very strange one. It is a poison which does not destroy the sensory nerve. If you inject Curare into the veins of a frog, the frog still suffers under dissection. Nor does it destroy the motor nerve. The muscle still reacts if you excite it. But the Curare destroys the connection, it prevents the sensory nerve from transmitting its order to the motor nerve. It paralyses the muscle.
Such exactly has been the effect of the Lutheran poison. It has not killed the speculative activities of Germany. On the contrary it has stimulated them, even as it has enormously stimulated the political activities of the German State.
I would sum up this essential point of my argument and indeed I would sum up my whole case against Lutheranism in the following way. Lutheranism has created two tremendous forces. It has produced a pure speculative idealism on the one hand and it has produced a pure political despotism on the other. For many generations the formidable potentialities of these forces have not been realised. The accidents of European history kept them both weak and kept them both separate. But the day came when the pure political despotism of Germany ceased to be weak, when one of the five hundred German princelings became a mighty despot. And a more fateful day came when the pure speculative idealism ceased to move in its own sphere and was enlisted in the service of that despotism. Then an awful thing happened. The positive pole and the negative pole of Germany came in contact. The explosion produced the present world catastrophe.