Bondage of the Will

In Luther’s Address to the Christian Nobility, he states, “God has given us a young and noble sovereign, and has roused great hopes in many hearts; now it is right that we too should do what we can, and make good use of time and grace.” This establishes what he wants the German Nobility to do. He wants them to confront the church and make it stop the wrong it is doing. Luther is saying that God has given them the obligation to correct what the church has corrupted. God has given the

This quote explains Martin Luther’s ideas of salvation and justification through only faith. He believed that people like the Pope were just public figures that were abusing their power for their own interests and beliefs. They would use god’s word to intimidate Kings and Queens. He thought that the Pope was out of line using his authority to forgive sins for material objects. Indulgence is a grant given by the Pope to cancel all sins for donations to the church. This made people more willing to just donate if they could get something in return also. Critics told Luther that there is no way you could achieve salvation without good works, but Luther uses bible passages to make a case that faith, alone, is all you need to be a Christian follower set to be in heaven. Martin Luther knew that it wasn’t right nor faithful for the Pope to do this.

The Archbishop is reminded by Luther that all people must work out their salvation themselves. Moreover, indulgences are taught in church, yet devotion and love are seldom preached, despite being much more important. What was significant was that the people should learn the bible and the grace of God, as indulgences were never mentioned in the bible. Luther then pleads that he himself is helpless to do anything to aid this problem, but the Archbishop can, if he so chooses.

Martin Luther emphasizes that human will is subservient to faith “if God’s grace is wanting, if its taken away from that small power, what can it do? It is ineffective….Hence it follows that free will without God’s grace is not free at all, but is the permanent prisoner and bond slave of evil, since it cannot turn itself to good.”(Luther, 187) Man’s free will does not exist on its own with the approval and decision by God. Man is only free by God’s will, but of course when man seeks free will without the grace of God, he is considered an evil man. To Luther, the Godly man is good to his society and himself, while “the ungodly man, like Satan nor seek God, nor care for the things of God: he seeks his own riches, and glory, and works.., and power, and sovereignty” (Luther, 192) to employ it for his own peace and will not allow anyone to take away from what he gained. Luther goes into distinguishing human civil laws from the gospel. At the same time, the former restrains the evil behavior of humans, but of course it does not make them righteous. Individuals withdraw from sin, “not willing or for the love of virtue, but ..fear the prison, the sword, and the hangman (Luther, 139) while

By drawing assurance that faith frees from the law, Luther discusses God’s promises to “fulfill the law” through “believ[ing] in Christ” (Luther 2003). Similar to how good works do not justify righteousness, the law is not established through justification. On the contrary, the law does the opposite of justify; it is a prison to those who have not yet obtained grace. In this prison, humans tend to stay in the confinements of the cell in fear of the law; their obedience is inspired by fear. What kind of righteousness is expected to be obtained by only obeying in fear of punishment? Luther explains that those who strictly follow the law this way will eventually fail (Luther 2003). Yet, it is through faith in God that one can rely on His promises “to fulfill the law and not covet” (Luther 2003). However, Luther uses this concept to warn those who do not believe that they will not "fulfill all the works of the law" (Luther 2003). Through Christ, Luther corrected this misconception by believing that humans can be freed from the law only through a strong bond to faith.

Luther was zealous towards the gospel. He felt strongly about the gospel and felt it was unfair only the upperclassmen and well educated could read and interpret the bible themselves. People should be able to read and interpret God’s word themselves rather than trusting the pope’s interpretations. This was unpopular with the Catholic Church because they felt a loss of control over the masses and common people. What is more is the people of Wittenberg were too unintelligent to understand God’s word and this lead to the translating of the New Testament to German in 1529. It was not long before Luther took it upon himself to translate the Gospel in its entirety to German.

Prior to his new understanding of God’s righteousness Luther hated God because he did not know the love of God, he only knew the judging angry God. Luther did not understand how an angry God could be righteous. Consequently, Luther had been taught that, “God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner”. As a result, he believed there was no way for sinners to be justified by God. Luther felt crushed by the Mosaic Law and threatened with God’s righteousness and wrath by the gospel. However, through his studies and meditations Luther came to understand the true meaning of the phrase “righteousness of God”. He described his new understanding to be “the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith.” In other words, the righteousness of God is a gift from God to those who live by faith. Accordingly, Luther felt born again. He found a new relationship with God and the Scriptures. In the light of his new views, Luther was conflicted by the Roman Catholic Church teachings on penance and righteousness. As a result, Luther developed his own doctrine of justification based on

Luther had a very strong belief that salvation comes from faith alone. All that is needed to be justified in front of God is to have faith. Michael M. Ramos writes “Martin Luther believed that salvation depends not on human effort or merit but only on the freely given grace of God, which is accepted in faith” (35). Luther believes that first God extends grace, which is the death of Jesus and the sending of the Holy Spirit. God reaches out to man and offers grace. The grace is not because humans deserve it from merit or human accomplishments. God extends grace because he is a righteous God. Now the only thing that humans must do to be justified

Luther downplays the importance of "works" in the justification of man and instead emphasizes the place of faith and the grace that goes with it: "For the word of God cannot be received and honoured by any works,

In Document 1 an excerpt from Martin Luther's reply when summoned to appear for the Emperor at the Diet of Worms he says: “my conscience is captive to the World Of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe”. He is saying that god is more important that his conscience.

-The church was saying that you needed to be saved and you needed Catholic priest to be directly involved in your path to salvation. Luther put emphasis on an individual’s personal relationship with God through Jesus.

He wrote the 95 theses challenging the wealth of the church, the way to salvation, the authority, and indulgences. Moreover, his four concepts of sola fide, sola scriptura, priesthood of all believers, and all work is sacred challenged the very structure of the religion that the church was built upon. His belief of only faith alone could save one from purgatory, which nullified the need for indulgences. He proves this by quoting the Book of Romans and the New Testament, which was the passage God made him point to. He was able to justify faith alone by proving if one believed in Jesus's messages one was saved, because believing one was saved only with works while not believing in God was not the way to salvation (Justification by Faith). Moreover, Luther believed anyone could interpret the scripture and only what is in scripture should be believed, which challenged the Pope's interpretation and made people less dependant on the church. The Priesthood of all believers challenged the Pope's immediate connection to God and argued that even Priests and the Pope were susceptible to mistakes (The interpretation of the Bible and the Nature of the Clergy). In contrary to the Roman Catholic Church he was adamant about the fact of all being equal in God's eyes, thus the clergy was equal to the laity and not deserving of special privileges. He also stated that the church was protecting itself with the three concepts of spiritual power stronger than temporal power, only the Pope could interpret Scripture, and only the Pope could summon a council (On Papal Power). This allowed the papacy to defend itself from outside attempts to reform it. The papacy argued temporal power was earthly and ever changing, but spiritual power dealt with the after life and was constant, resulting in the papacy seeing itself more powerful than temporal power. Luther

Martin Luther was arguably one of the most important figures in the entire history of Christianity. If the creation of the Lutheran Church was not enough of an accomplishment, he can also be credited with orchestrating the division of the Catholic and Protestant churches. Even as a young Augustinian Monk Martin Luther was convinced the Catholic Church had lost its way. He obsessed over his purity and relationship with God, and strongly believed the Catholic Church had lost its way over the selling of “Indulgences”. Essentially, how the Church misinterpreted and taught the concepts of sin relative to temporal and eternal punishment. He was destined to confront the Catholic Church which he did and ultimately led to the separation events that are still highly relevant to this day. This was the primary driver for the first phase of his rebellion. The second was his German translation of the New Testament, which he used to both teach anyone to read and learn the holy book.

“A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” This paradox is the basis of Luther’s concept on Christian freedom. For Luther, his reform freed Christians two fold. Christians were free from false assumptions about salvation and from the commandments of the Old Testament. To Luther, God alone could grant salvation. Despite this freedom, Christians still had to obey earthly laws. The differences of spiritual and temporal freedom seemed contradictory but for Luther it was clear that faith would free the Christian soul. Luther defined freedom for a Christian as freedom through faith. Salvation was granted by God alone. However their flesh was still bound

In Rome, cardinals saw Luther's theses as an attack on papal authority. In 1518, at a meeting of the Augustinian Order in Heidelberg, Luther set out his positions with even more precision. In the Heidelberg Disputation, we see the signs of a maturing in Luther's thought and new clarity surrounding his theological perspective—the Theology of the Cross.