Whether Luther denied that repentance was grief.
Whether Luther denied that repentance was grief.
§ 4. There is no reason for Bellarmine to counter by saying that Luther denied that repentance is hatred or grief concerning one’s past life. The contrary of this occurs more than a thousand times in Luther’s writings.
** Even Gregorius de Valentia ([In Thom.,] vol. 4, disput. 7, q. 2, point 1, col. 1593C) says, “Luther disgracefully erred when he wrote that not grief over past sin but only the emendation of life pertains to repentance.” (See [Luther,] Art. Schmalcal., part 3, article 3.)3 Luther intended this: that repentance consists not only in griefs and terrors but rather in a love of righteousness, confidence in grace, and a change of life. Pererius acknowledges this when he comments (on Genesis 27, disp. 8, p. 770, on the passage Heb. 12:17, which reads: “He found no place for repentance”), saying, “Therefore it is clear that a change of deed or disposition is indicated by the word ‘repentance.’ ” And he brings forth other texts of Scripture with this meaning and concludes at last: “Thus it is clear that in the word ‘repentance’ there is the notion and meaning of change.” **
But let the words of Luther which provided the opportunity for calumny also be considered, and the necessary response will readily appear. They read in this way (Jena Latin edition, vol. 1, Letter ad Staupitium, f. 73):
From you, as if a voice from heaven, we have heard that it is not true repentance unless it begins from a love of righteousness and a love of God, etc. This word of yours stuck in me like the keen arrow of a powerful man, and so I began to compare it with the Scriptures which teach repentance. Behold, these words were playing a very delightful game with me and were laughing at and attacking this idea so that, at first, in almost all of Scripture there was no word more bitter to me than “repentance.” Now nothing sounds sweeter or more pleasant to me, for the Commandments of God become sweet when we understand that we must read them not just in books but also in the wounds of our beloved Savior.
And a bit later:
As I clung to these ideas, I dared to think that those people are wrong who attribute so much to the works of repentance that they have left to us scarcely a remnant of repentance besides some cold satisfactions and a very difficult confession; they obviously have been influenced by the Latin word, because “doing penance” sounds more like an action than a change of affection, and in the Greek μετανοεῑν by no means satisfies that.4
Those are the words of Luther, from which it readily appears that: (1) He does not disapprove of the word “repentance” [poenitentia] itself but is censuring those who want to draw satisfactions out of the expression “to do penance” [agere poenitentiam], even though the expression in Greek is μετανοεῑν, which means a change of affection. Tertullian (Advers. Marcion., bk. 2, ch. 20, p. 212): “In the Greek language the word ‘repentance’ is composed not from ‘confession of sin’ but from ‘change of mind.’ ”
(2) He is not denying that grief and repentance are connected, and yet repentance ought to begin from a love of righteousness and of God, and the faith which rests upon the wounds of Christ ought to be connected with repentance, and consequently the forgiveness of sins must be sought not in our works or satisfactions but in Christ. Clearly Luther intended the same thing as is cited from Augustine (De poenit.) in [Ius canonicum,] De poenit., c. Si apostolus, dist. 3: “A truly repentant person is one who grieves over his sins and rejoices over his grief.”