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    On Christian Liberty
    On Christian Liberty
    On Christian Liberty
    Ebook87 pages1 hour

    On Christian Liberty

    By Martin Luther

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    About this ebook

    This timeless little classic communicates essential teachings of Martin Luther. The subject of Freedom is both timely and poignantly relevant today. For the Christian, this freedom is liberty from sin and death, and the opportunity to serve one's neighbor. Written in a simple style, On Christian Liberty conveys significant spi
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFortress Press
    Release dateApr 25, 2003
    ISBN9781451414264
    On Christian Liberty
    Author

    Martin Luther

    Martin Luther (1483–1546) was a German theologian and one of the most influential figures in the Protestant Reformation. Some of Luther’s best-known works are the Ninety-Five Theses, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” and his translation of the Bible into German. 

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    • 4/5
      In 1820, three years after posting his famous theses, Luther was still a monk in the Catholic Church. It was then that he wrote this short manifesto regarding the nature of the freedom of a Christian. In it he elucidates some of the principles that would become the foundation of the Protestant Reformation. He opens with a discussion of "man's twofold nature" of the inner spiritual nature or the soul and the outer bodily nature of the flesh. These two natures are in conflict for it is the inner nature or soul that is fed by the preaching of Christ that makes it righteous. He also discusses the seeming contradiction that the Christian is both free and subject to no one while at the same time in bondage and servant to all. This short but rich text also brings out the importance of each individual being his own priest; thus laying the foundation for the doctrine of the "priesthood of all believers". Luther sent this manifesto to Pope Leo X, but the Catholic hierarchy would not be responsive. In the following year he would appear before the Diet of Worms and be declared a heretic.
    • 1/5
      The "liberty" in question being the liberty to ignore the suffering in the world because faith not works will get us into heaven. Or maybe the liberty to hate and eschew the glories of creation--your food, drink, music, dance, sex--because the soul suffers not their absence and is reborn each day anew (so fuck the body). In either case, this is pernicious as a loyalty oath.
    • 5/5
      A work that every Christian ought to own and be familiar with. The "marriage" illustration is one of the most profound insights Luther gave the church.

    Book preview

    On Christian Liberty - Martin Luther

    On Christian Liberty

    Martin Luther

    Translated by W. A. Lambert

    Revised by Harold J. Grimm

    Fortress Press

    Minneapolis

    ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY

    Copyright © 2003 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Augsburg Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440.

    This work is excerpted from volume 31 of Luther’s Works, edited by Harold J. Grimm and Helmut T. Lehmann, © 1957 Fortress Press.

    Introduced by Roy A. Harrisville, III

    ISBN: 0-8006-3607-4

    Contents

    Introduction

    On Christian Liberty

    An Open Letter to Pope Leo X

    Notes

    Introduction

    Martin Luther stands as one of the most significant figures in Western history. His distinction as the father of the Protestant Reformation is augmented by his innovative use of new technology (the printing press), his translation of the Christian Bible into the vernacular, and his impact upon European society. Indeed, his legacy continues to this day in the Lutheran denominations around the world and the respect his theological formulations enjoy in the whole Christian church.

    Born in 1483 to middle-class parents in the area of Saxony in eastern Germany, he became an Augustinian monk, a priest, a professor of biblical literature, a reformer, a husband and father. He died in 1546 after having witnessed the birth of a renewal movement that would result in a profound shift in faith, politics, and society. Not all results would prove beneficial, and much suffering would come from those who opposed and those who supported his ideas. Not until the end of the Thirty Years War in the next century would his followers and his enemies lay down their arms.

    He has been praised and vilified for what he began and preached and wrote. Some of it must be judged by the context of his day, some of it must be criticized by the lights of his own beliefs, and some of it shines with the luster of divine reflection. However his work is judged, it cannot be avoided, for his impact upon church and society endures in the faith and hope of millions.

    Martin Luther’s treatise, or written argument, On Christian Liberty (The Freedom of a Christian), remains one of the most influential of his many works. In 1517 an obscure professor in the town of Wittenberg issued a list of Ninety-five Theses, or propositions, that called for repentance, an end to the sale of indulgences (expensive pieces of paper that assured them or a deceased relative of relief from punishment after death for sin), and a church council to debate such matters. By 1520 Luther’s views had been published widely in such treatises as The Address to the German Nobility and On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, both written in that year and both attacking certain aspects of the church, including the papal see (the seat of a bishop’s office or authority). He had appeared in two meetings, one in Augsburg (1518) and the other at Leipzig (1519) to defend his views.

    Now on September 6, 1520, Luther had been persuaded to write On Christian Liberty at the request of his mentor and head of his monastic order in Germany, Johann von Staupitz, and his successor, Wenceslaus Link. Both men had been prevailed upon by the pope’s emissary, Karl von Miltitz, to urge Luther to write a conciliatory letter to Pope Leo X in a final effort to prevent a split in the church and assure the Pope that Luther had not attacked him personally. Miltitz met with Luther himself on October 12 to press the case. By this time, however, the Pope had issued an ultimatum on June 15 that if Luther did not renounce his views within sixty days, he and all his followers would be excommunicated from the church.

    Luther agreed to write the letter to Pope Leo (included at the end of this book) and also a devotional book to accompany it. Both were penned in Latin, as was customary in the church of those days. If the Pope ever read the letter or the treatise, he would have found in the treatise a succinct and clear expression of Luther’s evangelical theology. The Christian, Luther declared, is perfectly free from sin, death, and the devil through faith in Christ. At the same time, this does not give license to the Christian to act as he or she wishes, but rather bestows on believers the marvelous opportunity to serve their neighbors. For that is what God, in Christ, has done for his children.

    Martin Luther’s Treatise

    On Christian Liberty

    [The Freedom of a Christian]

    Many people have considered Christian faith an easy thing, and not a few have given it a place among the virtues. They do this because they have not experienced it and have never tasted the great strength there is in faith. It is impossible to write well about it or to understand what has been written about it unless one has at one time or another experienced the courage which faith gives a man when trials oppress him. But he who has had even a faint taste of it can never write, speak, meditate, or hear enough concerning it. It is a living spring of water welling up to eternal life, as Christ calls it in John 4[:14].

    As for me, although I have no wealth of faith to boast of and know how scant my supply is, I nevertheless hope that I have attained to a little faith, even though I have been assailed by great and various temptations; and I hope that I can discuss it, if not more elegantly, certainly more to the point, than those literalists and subtle disputants have previously done, who have not even understood what they have written.

    To make the way smoother for the unlearned—for only them do I serve—I shall set down the following two propositions concerning the freedom and the bondage of the spirit:

    A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.

    A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.

    These two theses seem to contradict each other. If, however, they should be found to fit together they would serve our purpose beautifully. Both are Paul’s own statements, who says in 1 Cor. 9[:19], For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, and in Rom. 13[:8], Owe no one anything, except to love one another. Love by its very nature is ready to serve and be subject to him who is loved. So Christ, although he was Lord of all, was born of woman, born under the law [Gal. 4:4], and therefore was at the same time a free man and a servant, in the form of God and of a servant [Phil. 2:6–7].

    Let us start, however, with something more remote from our subject, but more obvious. Man has a twofold nature, a spiritual and a bodily one. According to the spiritual nature, which men

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