e was
violent and faithless. The theory of Nietzsche is monstrous, but it is
the logical conclusion of the religious revolution accomplished by Luther
and of the philosophical revolution accomplished by Kant." He finds the
causal nexus between Luther and Hindenburg in two important doctrines and
several corollaries. First, the doctrine of justification by faith meant
the disparagement of morality and the exaltation of the end at the
expense of the means. Secondly, Luther deified the state. Finally, in
his narrow patriotism, Luther is thought to have inspired the reckless
deeds of his posterity.

On the other hand some French Protestants, notably Weiss, have sought to
show that the modern doctrines of Prussia were not due to Luther but were
an apostasy from him.

Practically all the older methods of interpreting the Reformation have
survived to the present; to save space they must be noticed with the
utmost brevity.

{739} [Sidenote: Protestants]

The Protestant scholars of the last sixty years have all, as far as they
are worthy of serious notice, escaped from the crudely supernaturalistic
point of view. Their temptation is now, in proportion as they are
conservative, to read into the Reformation ideas of their own. Harnack
[Sidenote: Harnack] sees in Luther, as he does in Christ and Paul and all
other of his heroes, exactly his own German liberal Evangelical mind. He
is inclined to admit that Luther was little help to the progress of
science and enlightenment, that he did not absorb the cultural elements
of his time nor recognize the right and duty of free research, but yet he
thinks the Reformation more important than any other revolution since
Paul simply because it restored the true, _i.e._ Pauline and Harnackian
theology. Loisy's criticism of him is brilliant: "What would Luther have
thought had his doctrine of salvation by faith been presented to him with
the amendment 'independently of beliefs,' or with this amendment, 'faith
in the merciful Father, for faith in the Son is foreign to the Gospel of
Jesus'?" The same treatment of Mohammedanism, as that accorded by
Harnack to Christianity would, as Loisy remarks, deduce from it the same
humanitarian deism as that now fashionable at Berlin.

I should like to speak of the work of Below and Wernle, of Boehmer and
Koehler, of Fisher and Walker and McGiffert, and of many other Protestant
scholars, by which I have profited. But I can only mention one other