Luther and Medieval Piety

The great question haunting late medieval piety was that of the inadequacy of human piety. As Berndt Hamm puts it (Reformation of Faith), the “harrowing question” was that of the “spiritual inadequacy” of Christians (88).

The late medieval answer was to reduce the requirements necessary to meet with God’s favor. He discusses the Coelifodina (1502) of Johannes von Paltz, an Augustinian friar who was a member of the house of Erfurt when Luther entered the order. Paltz went the old “do your best with what you have” one better, arguing that a good will sufficed for those who were not in fact able to do their best.

Paltz illustrated with a story about Bernard of Clairvaux:

Bernard came to a city where a nobleman had lived in great sin with a blood-relation. When he fell ill the priest came to him with the elements of the Eucharist and asked him whether he felt grief that he had sinned with his blood-relation. The nobleman answered that he felt no grief, and still took pleasure in her. Thereupon the priest replied that he could not give him absolution or dare to administer the sacrament, and departed. But when Bernard learned of this incident from the priest he went back with him to the nobleman and likewise asked him whether he was not sorry for such a great offense. When he again replied in the negative and said that he felt joy in it, Bernard said: ‘Do you not feel any grief that you cannot feel grief for such a sin?’ The nobleman replied: ‘To be sure it grieves me that I feel no grief.’ Then Bernard instructed the priest to give him absolution and administer the sacrament ‘because he did as much as he could do’ (quia fecit quod in se fuit); and Bernard trusted that the Sacraments would compensate for what was lacking. And this indeed happened, Paltz concludes: ‘after he had tasted Christ’s Sacraments he felt such a remorse and abhorrence of his sin that he could never again look upon that person.’

The axiom of facere quod was “totally flexible.” In Paltz’s hands, it

is no longer to be seen as a rigid standard of divine and ecclesiastical law; instead it makes possible a flexible reduction of the requirements according to the respective capabilities of a particular person. If he does not wish to renounce his sins, then he should at least wish that he did so desire. A desire to desire is enough—and a minimum of desire will always be possible. If he can feel no grief, he should at least grieve that he has no grief. . . . And if he cannot desire what God demands, then he should at least desire that he may be able to desire it. (96-7)

Some have argued that Luther simply continues on this way of minimization, eliminating even the minimal requirement that a person have grief over his lack of grief, or a desire to desire (or a desire to desire to desire, or . . .). Hamm rightly insists that this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of Luther. He doesn’t lower the bar further but rather “separates the sinners’ pardon completely from the category of the minimally adequate emotional repentance necessary for salvation, and links it solely to God’s promise ‘extra nos,’ because all humans are totally inadequate before God” (100).