Martin Luther's 'On Christian Liberty'

Religion is the most important aspect of many people’s lives, serving as a roadmap to live virtuously while promising eternal life and salvation. In his work On Christian Liberty, Martin Luther writes on what it means to truly be Christian and how to achieve salvation. Luther discusses many aspects of Christian faith, including the difference between the inner person and outer man, the effect of works on salvation, the marriage with Jesus as a result of faith, how individuals should act towards others, and the important notion of Christian liberty that arises because of one’s faith. Luther’s ideas were highly controversial at the time as many of them opposed the thinking of the Catholic Church, one of the most powerful institutions in the world. …show more content…
These two contradictory theses that Luther discusses are “a Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none” and “a Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” This is an important aspect of what it means to be a Christian. The perfect freedom is referring to the freedom of inner person that Catholics possess. When one is faithful and following Jesus, they are free from laws and other people, otherwise known as “Christian Liberty.” On the other hand, a Christian is a dutiful servant in the sense that they ought to serve others. This servitude has to do with the body, not with the soul, as it is in regards to works. This paradox encapsulates what it means to be a Christian in Luther’s …show more content…
The Catholic Church, and on a larger extent the Catholic faith as a whole, adamantly disagrees with Luther’s notion that works have nothing to do with salvation or faith. In his letter to one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation in John Calvin, Jacopo Sadoleto, a Roman Catholic Cardinal, agreed that we achieve salvation through faith alone. However, Sadoleto argued that faith included not only preaching Christ but included works as well, making works vital to an individual’s salvation. While both Sadoleto and Luther agree we achieve salvation by faith alone, they have differing views of what that statement truly means, with Sadoleto including works in faith while Luther views works as serving a different purpose. Sadoleto’s stance on the importance of works is reflected in James, as it reads “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?” In addition to Sadoleto and the Bible, this point was discussed by the Council of Trent in their ninth Canon on justification. It reads “If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the action of his own will, let him be anathema.” It is clear that the importance of works when it comes