Luther's actual application, therefore, of the 'method' of Jesus to that inner body of dogma, developed as we have seen, which he found regnant, proceeded no farther than this.
And justification by faith, our being saved by 'giving our hearty consent to Christ's atoning work on our behalf,' by 'pleading simply the blood of the covenant,' Luther made the essential matter not only of his own religious system but of the entire New Testament. We must be enabled, he said, and we are enabled, to distinguish among the books of the Bible those which are the best; now, those are the best which show Christ, and teach what would be enough for us to know even if no other parts of the Bible existed. And this evangelical element, as it has been called, this fundamental thought of the Gospel, is, for Luther, our 'being justified by the alone merits of Christ.' This is the doctrine of 'passive or Christian righteousness,' as Luther is fond of naming it, which consists in 'doing nothing, but simply knowing and believing that Christ is gone to the Father and we see him no more! that he sits in Heaven at the right hand of the Father, not as our judge, but made unto us by God wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption;[1] in sum, that he is our high-priest making intercession for us.' Everyone will recognise the consecrated watchwords of Protestant theology.
Such is Luther's criticism of the New Testament, of its fundamental thought. And he picks out, as the kernel and marrow of the New Testament, the Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle by the author of this Gospel, St. Paul's Epistles,—in especial those to the Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians,—and the First Epistle of St. Peter. Now, the common complaint against Luther is on the score of his audacity in thus venturing to make a table of precedence
