I Agree With Martin Luther

Well, sort of. I agree with what he actually says but not what he thinks he is saying. In The Freedom of the Christian Man (I assume he is including women also, but he may not be I can't really tell) he starts off by making two paradoxical statements. These are commonly mentioned in the church and most Christians have heard them at one time or another. He states that a Christian is both free from all and a slave to all.

The main theses of the article is that Christians are free from obedience to the law and doing good works for justification. We are saved by faith alone (see bottom for a blurb on this topic) and thus we do not need works. He then goes on to say that because we are free from works does not mean that we should not do works. Man is free in that he is not bound by the law and works, but a man does these works as far as he is a slave to others.

It is interesting to note that he says that a Christian is not only free but also a slave to all to begin his work. Luther defines a Christian as one who is both free and a slave. This means, by deduction, that one cannot be a Christian unless one is both free and slave. Here Luther says that as a slave to all one must perform the good works which are necessary to bind neighbor to neighbor. Therefore, Luther contradicts himself by saying that works are not required for justification yet it is required that a Christian be both free and slave. Without being a slave to others a person cannot be a Christian and one cannot be a proper slave to others without performing good works. Thus, in the end Luther’s position is phenomenalogically the same as the Catholic position because it takes works to be a Christian. We are justified by faith apart from the law but this justification is not true, or the faith is not real, if the person does not bind themselves as a slave to all thus performing works.

Luther would not agree with my assesment of his position, but he said it not me (though the summation is mine). He even goes on to defend my point by stating: “We conclude, therefore, that a Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and in his neighbor.” So, my point is that for all intents and purposes works are necessary to Luther's own definition of what it means to be a Christian. That begs the question, is Luther saying it is possible to be justified by faith without being a Christian which, as I have shown, means being a slave to the neighbor and thus perfoming works that benefit the neighbor therein?

I assume he would answer in the negative which makes his basic argument logically inconsistent. However, I would still argue that this does not make the entire work or even the main points useless. I found Luther's insights helpful due to his emphasis on faith, which we all, Catholic or Protestant, often neglect.


A note on Luther's view of faith:

Two things. First, we are all aware of Luther's doctrine of faith alone. What we often do not realize is that when translating the bible into German he added the word "alone" into the text. The bible never mentions "faith alone" as a doctrine that should be obviously apparent to every reader (Unfortunately, the German princes and layity read Luther's version and thought the doctrine was on the very pages of the scripture. How could he be wrong?). Luther believed that the doctrine was so foundational in scripture that he did not think he was changing the meaning of the original text by adding the term "alone" where he thought it should appear. He was simply helping Paul out a bit since he obviously forgot to add it in himself.

If the doctrine holds up to scrutiny or not, that is not my concern here. It is my concern to illustrate only that Luther made the text say what he thought it should say and not what it actually said. This is probably why Luther was not a big fan of the book of James. Most understand that Luther belittled the "Epistle of Straw" because of its emphasis on faith and works. A more important passage may have been, and is often looked over today, the very last verse of James which says that anyone who brings back a sinner from erring in their ways "saves his (the bringer back) soul from death and covers a multidude of sins." Luther would not have enjoyed this verse as it implies that someone's good deed, helping a sinner return to Christ, will save his soul and cover his sins instead of faith alone.

Second, I think Luther misses the full meaning of faith. Luther associates faith (fides in Latin and pistis in Greek) with belief which does not have a correlative word used in scripture. Faith in Latin and Greek had a much fuller meaning than simply believing something. When we use the term "believe" we often use it in a way such as, " I hold the view that..." Luther does not use it on quite this elementary level but he does not use the whole biblical meaning either.

Luther states that by having faith in Christ we are putting our trust in his promises. This is definately a critical aspect of faith, but faith also means being faithful to the person which we put faith in. This is where Luther fails to give a full understanding of faith. By coorelating faith and belief it would seem that all it takes to be faithful is to continue to have a belief about the person and promises of Jesus. But the faithfulness of Christ (pistus Christou) to the Father meant that he acted in certain ways. Could God come to earth and not heal the sick, care for the poor, and perform physical as well as spritual acts of mercy on suffering?

Absolutely not, for God had revealed himself in the OT, in the law and the prophets, as this type of God. Thus, if we are to have faith in Christ we must also be faithful to Christ which encapsulates a lot more than simply believing in certain promises. We must also act in the way that Christ acted. We must perform acts of mercy to the poor (maybe we should even be poor ourselves), widowed, orphaned, and suffering. Faith cannot be a get-out-of-hell-free card that relinquishes us of our responsibility to act in ways which attest to our faith in and, thus, our faithfulness to Jesus Christ.

Luther's emphasis on faith over against works was a result of his reaction to the Catholic Church of the early 1500's. It was a solid critique of the practices of the church of that time but in principle it was a bit off. The Catholic Church agreed with Luther that an act of grace must proceed faith and any works resulting from that faith. The Catholics as well as Luther and his followers believed that this happened at baptism (both groups baptized infants) but Luther had marked down the Catholic score before the game ever started by arguing that Catholic baptism was not a true sacrament (see The Babylonian Captivity of the Church). Thus, if Catholics said we aren't trying to earn our justification through works because we have already received faith at baptism, Luther said "Ah, but you didn't." To which Catholics responded, "Ah, but we did."

It should be noted that Aquinas, the premier Catholic theologian in the era prior to Luther, agreed wholeheartedly that virtue was possible only after faith. There were virtues that everyone could acheive, such as temperance and prudence, but for truly Christian virtues one had to have the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love which were only obtainable by grace through faith. Thus, when reading Luther's view of medieval Catholicism and its view on faith I keep two things in mind. One, Luther wasn't making up the theological abuses which he saw. And, two, he is a little bias in his portrayal of Catholic theology.

Edit:

In short, Luther says that a person is justified by faith alone. He then claims that to be a Christian a person must have works which testify to the faith. Thus, I conclude from this, that without works a person is not a Christian by Luther's definition. If a person is not a Christian by definition a person cannot be justified. So in the end, Luther's position only makes sense if a Christian needs works to be justified, not that a person is justified by works but works are necessary for justification (if that makes sense).