We shall see how in the case of justification he regards faith, and
then his particular “faith only” as the one factor, not, however,
the faith which is animated by charity, and this because, with the
Occamists, he rejects all supernatural habits. He extols the value of
faith on every occasion at the expense of the other virtues.[386]
The positive influence of Occam on Luther is also to be traced in the
domain of faith and knowledge. Luther imagines he is fortifying faith
by laying stress on its supposed opposition to reason, a tendency which
is manifest already in his Commentary on Romans. In this Occam and his
school were his models.
The saying that there is much in faith which is “plainly against
reason and the contrary of which is established by faith”[387] comes
from d’Ailly. Occam found the arguments for the existence of one God
inadequate.[388] Biel has not so much to say against these proofs, but
he does hold that the fact that one only God exists is a matter of
faith not capable of being absolutely proved by reason.[389]
Occam, whom Biel praises as “_multum clarus et latus_,” made faith
to know almost everything, but the results achieved by reason to be
few and unreliable.[390] He employed the function of reason, of a
caustic reason to boot, in order to raise doubts, or to exercise the
mind at the expense of the truths of revelation; yet in the positive
recognition of articles of faith he allowed reason to recede into the
background. In any case he prepared the way for the saying, that a
thing may be false in theology and yet true in philosophy, and _vice
versa_, a proposition condemned at the 5th Lateran Council by the
Constitution _Apostolici Regiminis_ of Leo X.[391]
Luther came to state clearly that “it was quite false to say the
same thing was true in philosophy and also in theology”; whoever
taught this was fettering the articles of faith “as prisoners to
the judgment of reason.”[392] We shall have to speak later of many
examples of the violent and hateful language with which he disparages
reason in favour of faith. His love for the Bible at an early period
strengthened in him the idea—one which the Occamists often advanced
in the course of the dialectic criticism to which they subjected the
truths of religion—that after all, the decisions of faith are not the
same as those of the mind, and that we must make the best of this
fact. Luther even in his Commentary on Romans is ever ready to decry
the “wisdom of the flesh,” which is there described as constantly
interfering with faith.
The union of faith and knowledge, of which true Scholasticism was
proud, never appealed to Luther.
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