Martin Luther

English

For guidance in resolving the authorities of Augustine.

First it is to be known that charity (whatever may be the case about what is possible) is in fact always given together with the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit together with it and in it.

Secondly, when Augustine says that love is God, let it not be understood with precision or exclusively — that is, as though love were only God — but by granting that love is God, yet not only that. For there is also a created love. Just as Christ is our faith, our righteousness, our grace and our sanctification.

And the Master seems not to speak altogether absurdly, in that he says the habit is the Holy Spirit. For that fabrication about habits takes its opinion from the words of Aristotle, that rancid philosopher. Otherwise it could well be said that the Holy Spirit is the charity concurring by himself with the will towards the production of the act of loving — unless perhaps something has been determined to the contrary concerning the essence.

Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by · published at bonaventure.wrootpress.com. This page quotes it; that is its home.

Latin

D. Martin Luthers Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, Band 9 (1893), pp. 42–43, Randbemerkungen zu den Sentenzen des Petrus Lombardus, Dist. 17, at Luther's c. 5 = caput III of this edition · pd

Notes

Written in the margin of his own copy around 1509–10, as a young friar lecturing on the Sentences, and the only voice on this page that gives the Master any ground. Luther does not simply restore the thesis: his first two principles concede a created love, so he is not where Lombard was. But he grants the Master is not absurd, and he says why the schools think otherwise — commentum illud de habitibus opinionem habet ex verbis Aristotelis rancidi philosophi. The whole habit-doctrine, on his account, is an Aristotelian import. Restoration note: the OCR reads randdi; rancidi is a conjecture, supported by the scan's systematic c-for-d confusion elsewhere in the same lines (didt for dicit, dileotio for dilectio) and by Luther's habitual epithet for Aristotle. It is the one word on this witness that a vision read of WA 9 p. 43 should confirm. ⛔ Chapter numbering: Luther's c. 5 is caput III here. He numbers by Migne's internal paragraphs, not by Quaracchi's capitula, and the two run apart from the start — his c. 3 is our caput I, c. 6 our caput IV, c. 11 our caput VI. This witness is anchored on our numbering and cites his.

Threads

• → parallel · Thomas Aquinas
  ⭐ The same move, in the other direction, two hundred and fifty years apart, with neither citing the other. Thomas explains the Master by a Platonist idiom Augustine had absorbed and somebody failed to notice was an idiom. Luther explains the schools the same way and names a different pagan: commentum illud de habitibus opinionem habet ex verbis Aristotelis rancidi philosophi. Each end of the tradition accounts for the other as philosophy mistaken for doctrine.
• → echoes · Bonaventure
  And then, alone on this page, someone gives the Master ground again: et videtur Magister non penitus absurdissime loqui, in eo quod habitum dicit esse spiritum sanctum. Luther does not restore the thesis — his own first two principles concede a created love — so this is an echo of Lombard's position rather than a citation of it, and it arrives after the position has stopped being argued about.
• → echoes · Bonaventure
  Alone on this page Luther gives the Master ground: et videtur Magister non penitus absurdissime loqui, in eo quod habitum dicit esse spiritum sanctum. He does not restore the thesis — his own first two principles concede a created love — so this is an echo of Lombard's position and not a citation of it.
• → contests · Thomas Aquinas
  Luther attacks the habit-doctrine at its root rather than in its detail: commentum illud de habitibus opinionem habet ex verbis Aristotelis rancidi philosophi. Thomas's article is the fullest statement of that doctrine on this page, and its own proof turns on exactly the Aristotelian machinery Luther is rejecting — that an act perfect in goodness cannot come from a power not perfected by a habit. Luther names no schoolman, so the edge is to the doctrine's clearest statement here, not to a citation.