Discussion Starter- The Protestant Reformation

Luther lays out the difference between doing good works and truly ‘believing’ in Christ. He explains that just as “a good or bad house does not make a good or a bad builder, but a good or a bad builder makes a good or a bad house,” so a work is “good if it was done in belief, wicked if it was done in unbelief” (48). This means doing works cannot make a person faithful because an unfaithful person will not be able to do works that are good. This seems to imply that simply believing in God’s existence, and trying to do good works to earn salvation, is not enough to constitute true ‘belief.’ Instead, “where Christ is truly seen, then there must be full and perfect joy in the Lord and peace of heart” (130). Thus ‘belief’ is a state of devotion to Christ in which one “serves one’s neighbor willingly and takes no account of… gain or loss” (51). Thus belief according to Luther is, in the words of the Study Question, more like ‘believing’ that you should honor your word - it is a set of principles on which one chooses to act, not for one’s own sake, but because one thinks those principles are inherently good. 

This helps explain why Luther speaks out against indulgences. Indulgences encourage people to do ‘good’ works for the sake of their own salvation, which goes directly against Luther’s definition of what belief in Christ means. So, such works are only done by those without faith, which means they must be “wicked.” Thus in Luther’s view indulgences can not actually bring anyone to salvation. But suppose a person does a work, such as giving to the poor, but does it for the selfish reason of earning salvation. Since it is “done in unbelief” it must be “wicked” according to Luther, but is this really the case since it does help others? Luther would clearly rather the work be done for the right reasons, but would he rather it not be done at all than be done for the wrong ones?

In Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin talks less explicitly about what constitutes belief, but also lays out guidelines for what the attitude of a righteous person looks like. He and Luther are similar in that they are both arguing, not against those who don’t think God exists, but against those they see as approaching belief in the wrong way. For Calvin, true belief involves accepting predestination. But on top of that, it involves unquestioning trust in God, which allows us to accept mysteries such as predestination without fully understanding them. As Calvin says, we shouldn’t “refuse to submit our judgment to the boundless wisdom of God, so far as to confess its insufficiency to comprehend many of his secrets” (240). Thus Luther and Calvin both lay out mindsets that should be adopted, rather than just statements that should be accepted as true or specific rules that should be obeyed.