2. Faith becomes central to the Protestants. How is it different than doing good works? When one says it involves ‘belief’ in God, in Jesus’ divinity, is that like believing that the earth is round? or believing that you should honor your word?
Faith is very important to Protestants; it's seen as something that gives man courage when they are faced with trials. "Faith alone is the saving and efficacious use of the word of God". There are three powers of faith: 1) a Christian has all he needs in faith, and does not need to do any work to justify himself, which therefore means he does not need law - this demonstrates that Christians are free from law. 2) If you're faithful you are regarded as truthful, righteous, and trustworthy, and 3) faith unites the soul with Christ as a bride is with her bridegroom. Luther says that they who believe have everything, and they who don't have nothing. This is because the Ten Commandments show us all to be sinners - we all covet, for example.. and we have all broken at least a few Commandments! - so we are all sinners. Therefore the only way to salvation is faith in God (I think this is kind of like the active vs passive righteousness in the Galatians passage; active righteousness bounds us in law and we know we will never be perfect and our sins just keep piling up, whereas passive righteousness is accepting the grace and mercy of God). Also, the worst offence is to not believe in God because it's like denying what He says is true, which is like putting yourself as an idol. A Christian is therefore only bound by his love toward his neighbours and that's his incentive for doing anything.
To answer the application question, a Christian shouldn't feel the need to go on a trip to do volunteer work over a trip in nature just because one seems like "good work". There was a passage that said it's okay if you're circumcised or uncircumcised, or if you follow the Old Testament or not, as long as you don't believe that is necessary for your faith/to be a good person. Moreover, Luther believes that a good man does good works, and it's not the good works that define a good man. So don't worry and enjoy nature if you want to!!!!
A helpful analogy that Luther uses to describe the relationship between faith and good works is that of a tree and its fruit. A good tree will naturally bear good fruit, but a good fruit does not make the whole tree good. Likewise, one with good faith will produce good works. This, however, does not mean that good works make the person good in his or her faith.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, Luther does not say that good works play no role in the development of inner faith. In "the Freedom of a Christian", he elaborates that good works like fasting and service discipline the body of its desires, thereby allowing one to cultivate belief in their soul, less affected by sins of the flesh. Therefore, good works must only come out of those who have good inner faith, but good works can help develop this faith by subjecting the body to discipline.
With regard to the application question, I don't think that trivializing the act of performing good works really fits with the Reformation writers' points ("don't worry and enjoy nature if you want to!!!!"). Yes, Luther suggests that 'good works' are not required to obtain salvation, similar to the other writers of the Reformation, but I think the point of the Reformation was to return Christianity to a faith-based doctrine that encouraged good works without reward.
ReplyDeleteThe main appeal of 'good works' and indulgences were that they balance out an individual's sins; people felt the need to perform works in order to get rid of sin. By emphasizing salvation by faith alone, the Reformation writers were able to absolve Christians of their sins and relieve some of that Catholic guilt of sin, freeing people from the worry of sin. But, I don't think the Reformation writers wanted to get rid of the desire to do good works entirely, only shift the reason why people were doing good works away from 'I'm only doing this to rid of sin.'
Like both Claire and Nikhil said, good works don't define and aren't necessary to being a good person, only faith. However, faith should compel individuals to perform good works in the service of God, not in order to appear more 'faithful' but by virtue of being 'faithful.'
Belief in God, as Luther states, should be genuine and because a person wants to believe in God. I agree with Gowan's point on this because Luther's objective was to make Christianity less superficial and about who can gain the most indulgences or complete the most rituals. Belief through Luther's methods is harder because it requires an individual to actually have faith in God, rather than asserting faith through rituals that anybody can do. Because a person would alreaday have a righteous state of mind, a person who is righteous will perform righteous acts because it becomes natural to that person.
ReplyDeleteBelief in God should be natural to a true Christian and therefore good works will follow.