The Protestant scholar last mentioned has dissected the Commentary
on the Psalms in detail; particularly did he examine its connection
with the philosophical and mystical system sometimes designated as
Augustinian Neo-Platonism.[173] It may be left an open question
whether his complicated researches have succeeded in proving that in
the Commentary—interpreted in the light of some of the older sermons
and the marginal glosses in the Zwickau books—Luther’s teaching
resolves itself into a “somewhat loose and contradictory mixture of
four elements,” namely, Augustinian Neo-Platonism, an Augustinian
doctrine on sin and grace, a trace of scholastic theology, and some of
the mysticism of St. Bernard.[174] His researches and his comparison
of many passages in the Commentary on the Psalms with the works of
Augustine, especially with the “_Soliloquia_” and the book “_De vera
religione_,” have certainly shown that Luther was indebted for his
expressions and to a certain extent for his line of thought, to those
works of Augustine with which he was then acquainted. He had probably
been attracted by the mystical tendency of these writings, by that
reflection of Platonism, which, however, neither in St. Augustine’s
nor in Luther’s case, as Hunzinger himself admits, involved any real
acceptance of the erroneous ideas of the heathen Neo-Platonism. Luther
was weary of the dry Scholasticism he had learned at the schools and
greedily absorbed the theology of the Bishop of Hippo, which appealed
far more to him, though his previous studies had been insufficient to
equip him for its proper understanding. His own words in 1532 express
his case fairly accurately. He says: “In the beginning I devoured
rather than read Augustine.”[175] In a marginal note on the Sentences
of Peter Lombard he speaks, in 1509, of this Doctor as “_numquam satis
laudatus_,” like him, he, too, would fain send the “_moderni_” and that
“fabulator Aristoteles” about their business.[176]
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