The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 34): Martin Luther: Salvation, Free Will, and Human Reason

Similar to his understanding of authority and Scripture, Luther’s understanding of salvation was also affected by his over-reaction to the admittedly distorted teaching of the Catholic Church of his day. The Catholic Church was teaching that although salvation came through grace and faith in Christ, that there were certain things that human beings could (and in fact should) do that could “merit the merit of Christ.”

Simply put, there were certain works that one could do in order to earn their salvation. The young Augustinian monk Luther found himself guilt-ridden for his sins, driven to perform as many works as possible so that God would relent his wrath upon him, and at the same time, consumed with a hatred for God based on the fact that he knew, deep down, that he could never do enough good works to earn God’s love. Perhaps this was also an over-reaction due to his troublesome relationship with his father, but in any case, one thing was certain: Luther tried the “Catholic way” of salvation, and found himself miserable and defeated.

Luther’s Reading of Romans 1:16-17
What changed his understanding of salvation was his reading of Romans, particularly Romans 1:16-17: the righteous will live by faith, not by works. Never mind the fact there is absolutely no way that Luther exegeted Paul correctly—when Paul spoke about “works,” he wasn’t talking about medieval Catholic “works,” but rather the “works” of Torah—Luther nevertheless got his theological criticism right. But where Luther went wrong is that he ended up denying any role at all for good works within a life of salvation. And the reason for that is because he viewed salvation itself differently. In order to understand this, we must take a few steps back.

In the oldest branch of Christianity, that of Orthodoxy, salvation was seen as being restored to a right relationship with God through Christ, so that, through the power of the Holy Spirit and the cooperation of the believer, the believer can achieve theosis. What this means is simple: eventually the believer will be made fully like Christ, as long as he uses his free will to participate in the restored relationship with God. In this respect, salvation is understood not as a “thing” one possesses, but rather as a restored relationship to be lived out. Therefore, since salvation is seen as fundamentally relational, what the believer does actually matters. What he does doesn’t get him saved, but does, in fact, affect (and either build or weaken) his relationship with Christ—much like a man and woman who get married. The marriage ceremony is just the beginning—the actual marriage involves living out that relationship.

What the Catholic Church did that was wrong, therefore, was that it introduced an understanding of “works” that is simply foreign to the Bible and to the historic Christian faith, and in doing so, it turned salvation more into a thing to possess than a restored relationship to be lived out. Luther was right to criticize and ultimately reject this view. But in rejecting it, he wrongly kept the Catholic understanding of salvation as being a thing one possessed. Luther’s view of salvation, therefore, ended up seeing salvation as a thing God gave to you freely. And since salvation was seen as a thing to possess, rather than a restored relationship to be lived out, the very concept of “works” became the boogeyman in Protestant eyes.

The Standard Protestant View of Things (vs. Orthodoxy and Catholicism)
Luther’s concept of salvation, the state of human beings, and the role of works all combined to form the standard Protestant understanding of salvation:

(A) human beings were utterly sinful and totally depraved, completely unable to ever chose God—“free will” was essentially an illusion;

(B) salvation was a thing God gave to those who put their faith in Christ, because what he did (i.e. suffer and die on the cross) was able to atone for our sins and purchase salvation for us;

(C) therefore, any “good works” that a Christian does are simply the “fruit” of that salvation, and in no way contributes to salvation—for after all, Luther was working from a premise that salvation was a thing to possess, and not a relationship to be lived out.

To utterly simply things, the three branches of Christianity tend to view salvation and works as the following:

(A) Orthodoxy: Salvation is the restoration of a relationship with God, and through that lived out life of faith, the Holy Spirit works through the works of the believer to achieve the fullness of Christ and theosis.

(B) Catholicism: Salvation is a thing to possess, a thing that God grants to the believer little by little, and a thing that a believer can earn a little bit faster if he does a certain amount of good works.

(C) Protestantism: Salvation is a thing to possess, a thing that God grants to the believer based on the work of Christ, and there is nothing a believer can ever do to earn it, because the believer, before he is saved, is utterly dead in his sins, and is therefore unable to do anything.

Incidentally, here is a really good youtube video that illustrates the difference between the Protestant and Orthodox views of salvation:

Free Will and Human Reason
On this topic of free will, the Catholic reformer Erasmus argued that even though the human will was damaged by the fall, that it was still not utterly destroyed; sinful humans therefore were still able to either accept or reject God’s grace that was necessary for salvation. Luther though completely rejected such a notion. He explained his understanding of the human will in this way:

“…the human will is placed between [God and Satan] like a beast of burden. If God rides it, it wills and goes where God wills…. If Satan rides it, it wills and goes where Satan wills; nor can it choose to run to either of the two riders or to seek him out, but the riders themselves contend for the possession and control of it.” Simply put, Luther rejected any notion of a truly free human will.

Related to this, obviously, was the concept of human reason, and its ability to come to a knowledge of God. The traditional Orthodox and Catholic view had always been that knowledge of God comes through both revelation and reason. Granted, the scholastics of the High Catholic Age, working from a more Aristotelean philosophical base, tended to perhaps exalt human reason a bit too much, but nevertheless, everyone agreed that revelation and reason were both involved in human beings coming to an understanding of God.

Luther, though, rejected this, for he viewed human reason with suspicion—after all, since the human will was nothing more than a “beast of burden” to either God or Satan, the human ability to reason must not be worth much either. Therefore, Luther put all his eggs into one basket—that of Scripture. For Luther, only that which was revealed in Scripture could give one any knowledge of God. Human reason was suspect, therefore one could only put stock in Scripture alone.

The problem with this view of reason (as well as this view of human will) should be obvious: who is it who decides to put stock in Scripture, and how does one understand that Scripture in which he has put stock? Is it not the one whose will chooses to put stock in Scripture? And is it not the one who uses his reasoning faculties to read and understand Scripture?

Long story short, as mentioned earlier, by putting the Bible on a pedestal, Luther actually (and unwittingly) subverted the authority of the Bible, for the Bible simply does not, and cannot, “speak for itself.” It always requires interpretation, and the way to guide us in proper interpretation is amassed wisdom and reason in Church Tradition. By essentially condemning human reason, Luther also threw out Church Tradition, and that left the Bible alone—Sola Scriptura—as the supreme authority for truth. But that is an impossibility, for the Bible needs to be interpreted correctly, and that requires human reason and fidelity to the historical witness of Church tradition—the very two things Luther discarded as he placed the Bible on a pedestal.

Conclusion
The result (as we will see) is that countless people began to read and interpret the Bible all on their own, without any rootedness in the historical Christian faith. Practically speaking, it was a person’s private interpretation and opinion of the Bible, and not the Bible itself, that became the standard for truth. And in order to justify his own opinion, that person would inevitably claim to that he had the “inner witness” of the Holy Spirit. Of course, what is one to do when one’s “inner witness of the Holy Spirit” contradicts someone else’s “inner witness of the Holy Spirit”? Well, the history of the Protestant Revolution is pretty clear: you condemn the other, fight, and eventually split off and create your own denomination.

Therefore, even though Luther correctly identified a number of problems within the theology of the Catholic Church of his day, his overzealous condemnation of certain things like free will and the validity of reason eventually lead to a number of unintended consequences within the emerging Protestant movement. Ironically, Sola Scriptura because the reason for the splintering and fragmenting of the Western Church.

Now let me just clarify that I don’t think Martin Luther was some kind of horrible person who perverted Christianity. He correctly saw that there were a number of errors in the teachings of the Catholic Church of his day that needed to be addressed. But we must be honest about where Luther went wrong in his attempts to fix those errors. He was a human being who made mistakes; and we must acknowledge where he made mistakes so that hopefully we can continue to come to a clearer understanding of the Christian faith.