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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 May 2021
Given his insistence on the dual temporal and spiritual spheres in which Christians live in the tension of freedom and service to others, Martin Luther's theological ethics prove paradoxical. This conundrum unfolds at the intersection of Luther's doctrine of justification and consequent Christian freedom (1520), and his doctrine of two kingdoms, which elucidates the complex world in which we live (1523). How is one to live in service to the neighbor as an unconditional subject, love enemies, and uphold justice? This article explores the New Finnish School interpretation of Luther's doctrine of justification as theosis in order to elucidate the Reformer's convoluted ethics. We may ultimately understand Luther's tensive position in terms of the believer's soul united to Christ, thereby becoming a Christ to others albeit, simul justus et peccator, imperfectly. This more fully accounts for Luther's appreciation for the ethical contingencies faced by Christians in everyday life.
1 See Part 3, “Reformation and Post-Reformation 20. Martin Luther (1483–1546),” in Readings in Christian Thought, ed. Kerr, Hugh T. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990)Google Scholar. Kerr argues that Luther's theology is “simple and straightforward,” and yet admits his notion of Christian freedom is an “evangelical paradox,” 139; Lindberg, Carter, “Luther's Struggle with Social-Ethical Issues,” in The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther, ed. McKim, Donald K. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 165–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and David M. Whitford, “Luther's Political Encounters,” 179–91, in The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther.
2 Luther, Martin, “Matt. 5:38–42, The Sermon on the Mount,” in Sermon on the Mount and the Magnificat, vol. 21, Luther's Works, ed. and trans. Pelikan, Jaroslav (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1956), 105–15Google Scholar. From here, all volumes of Luther's Works, once introduced, are rendered by the abbreviation LW with the volume and page number, for example, “LW 21:105.”
3 Here I rely on two works written within three years (1520 to 1523) of one another: Luther, Martin, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” in Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings, eds. Russell, William R. and Lull, Timothy F. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2012)Google Scholar; and Luther, Martin, “Temporal Authority—To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed,” in The Christian in Society 2, vol. 45, Luther's Works, ed. Brandt, Walther I. (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1962)Google Scholar.
4 A term Luther coins in his commentary, based on a series of sermons in Wittenberg (1532), on Matthew 5:38–42, LW 21:109. His treatment of this pericope in Matthew is indicative of the paradox of Christian life, namely, that “There is no getting around it, a Christian has to be a secular person of some sort,” LW 21:109.
5 Luther says plainly, “In short, the rule in the kingdom of Christ is the toleration of everything, forgiveness, and the recompense of evil with good. On the other hand, in the realm of the emperor, there should be no tolerance shown toward any injustice, but rather a defense against wrong and a punishment of it, and an effort to defend and maintain the right, according to what each one's office or station may require,” LW 21:113.
6 We should note immediately that there is indeed a vein of social and political concern in Luther's writings, while acknowledging the needful critique of his involvement in and acerbic condemnation of the peasants’ uprising during 1524 to 1525, as well as his obeisance to German princes. See Hillebrand, Hans J., “‘Christ Has Nothing to Do with Politics’: Martin Luther and the Societal Order,” in Encounters with Luther: New Directions for Critical Studies, eds. Stjerna, Kirsi I. and Schramm, Brooks (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2016), 207–19Google Scholar; Laffin, Michael Richard, The Promise of Martin Luther's Political Theology: Freeing Luther from the Modern Political Narrative (London and New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016)Google Scholar; and Lindberg, Carter and Wee, Paul, eds., The Forgotten Luther: Reclaiming the Social-Economic Dimension of the Reformation (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2016)Google Scholar.
7 Barclay, John M. G., “Interpreting Paul on Grace: Shifting Patterns of Perfection,” in Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), 108Google Scholar. This is the major theme for Luther in his “Against Latomus,” in Career of the Reformer 2, ed. George W. Forell, trans. George Lindbeck, vol. 32, Luther's Works, ed. Helmut T. Lehmann (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1958), 135–261. See also Pelikan, Jaroslav, “The Gospel as the Treasure of the Church,” in Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300–1700), vol. 4, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 155Google Scholar.
8 Simo Peura, “Christ as Favor and Gift (donum): The Challenge of Luther's Understanding of Justification,” in Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther, eds. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 42. Cf. Pelikan, “The Gospel as the Treasure of the Church,” 150–53, on the issue of Osiandrism as it pertains to this dispute over forensic and effective or “essential” righteousness.
9 Peura, “Christ as Favor and Gift (donum),” 42–48.
10 Represented in Tuomo Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith: Luther's View of Justification (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005); Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti, “‘Drinking from the Same Wells with Orthodox and Catholics’: Insights from the Finnish Interpretation of Luther's Theology,” Currents in Theology and Mission 34, no. 2 (April 2007): 85–96Google Scholar.
11 Tuomo Mannermaa, “Justification and Theosis in Lutheran-Orthodox Perspective,” in Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther, eds. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 33. See Kärkkäinen, “‘Drinking from the Same Wells with Orthodox and Catholics,’” 90.
12 Luther's understanding of Christ present in faith is apophatic. In Mannermaa, “Justification and Theosis in Lutheran-Orthodox Perspective,” Tuomo Mannermaa notes of Luther that “It is in the darkness of faith that Christ sits on his throne in all his reality and reigns, just as God did in the darkness and cloud in the most holy place of the Temple,” 37. Or as Luther says, “But the mode in which He is present cannot be thought, for there is darkness, as I have said,” LW 26, quoted in Mannermaa, “Justification and Theosis in Lutheran-Orthodox Perspective,” 37.
13 See Peura, “Christ as Favor and Gift (donum),” 42–69. See Mannermaa, “Justification and Theosis in Lutheran-Orthodox Perspective,” 32–36.
14 See Peura, “Christ as Favor and Gift (donum),” 60–63.
15 This is reflected in Luther, LW 45:102–05, 124; cf. Luther's reflection on the Fifth Commandment, Martin Luther, “The Large Catechism: Exposition of the Ten Commandments,” in Christian Ethics—Sources of the Living Tradition, eds. Waldo Beach and H. Richard Niebuhr (New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1973): 253–54.
16 Antti Raunio, “Natural Law and Faith: The Forgotten Foundations of Ethics in Luther's Theology,” in Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther, eds. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 113–16. It was Robert W. Jenson who spurred me on in this vein, with his claim that Luther's doctrine of justification, read from the vantage of theosis, carries material and moral weight. Robert W. Jenson, “Luther's Contemporary Theological Significance,” in The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther, ed. Donald K. McKim (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 281–84.
17 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 404.
18 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 404.
19 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 404. Cf. Robert W. Jenson, “Luther's Contemporary Theological Significance,” who notes (on page 280): “But the real God appears [for Luther] with nails in his extremities and mockery over his head, so that if we want images of security and peace, we must make them up ourselves. These are the idols.”
20 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 404.
21 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 404.
22 Luther “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 404–05. On the nature of the gift that is given by God, namely, God in Godself, see Oswald Bayer, “The Self-Giving God,” Lutheran Quarterly 33, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 125–36. Bayer notes that “The word in which, with which, and under which God gives himself [sic] is the word which expects trust and kindles and nurtures it. For Luther, the gift-word does not simply state what already exists, but actually creates what did not exist before,” 129. See Pelikan, “The Gospel as the Treasure of the Church,” 148.
23 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 405.
24 Lindberg, “Luther's Struggle with Social-Ethical Issues,” 165. In “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” editors Russell and Lull comment in note 7: “In making this claim Luther is swimming against the stream of the entire medieval tradition,” represented alternatively in Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham (406). Justification for these eminent theologians entailed a more complementary role of human agency in which we supplemented God's grace with works of righteousness intended to commend ourselves by charity to God's reckoning. See Scott Hendrix, “Luther,” in The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology, eds. David Bagchi and David C. Steinmetz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 48.
25 Pelikan, “The Gospel as the Treasure of the Church,” 145–47. Lindberg notes that for Luther, freedom in Christ meant liberation from an interminable attempt to justify ourselves in “striving to ascend to God,” 165.
26 Luther says “we do not reject good works. Indeed, good works are cherished and taught by us.” See “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 417.
27 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 414.
28 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 414.
29 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 417. On Luther's response to the scholastic tradition of quod in se est and the fides caritate formata, writ large, see Heiko A. Oberman, “‘Iustitia Christi’ and ‘Iustitia Dei’: Luther and the Scholastic Doctrines of Justification,” The Harvard Theological Review 59, no. 1 (January 1966).
30 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 419. “Indeed, we live for others and for ourselves,” Luther says, and so we are freely subject to the needs of our neighbors insofar as we no longer seek to escape this world, but realize instead that “it is necessary to live fully among people, conversing and dealing with them as Christ did, who was made in human likeness (Bar 3:37),” “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 418. Cf. Pelikan, “The Gospel as the Treasure of the Church,” 147.
Luther also admonishes penitents to relinquish themselves from reflection on the cross of Christ as an occasion for self-diminution and chastisement. He instead tells them to reflect on the love of God present in Christ's act for which God gave God's son for us. See Martin Luther, “A Meditation on Christ's Passion,” in Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings, eds. William R. Russell and Timothy F. Lull, 126–32. See Tuomo Mannermaa, Two Kinds of Love: Martin Luther's Religious World (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), 67–76.
31 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 409. See Laffin, “Ontology and Politics,” in The Promise of Martin Luther's Political Theology, 43–46; and Oberman, “‘Iustitia Christi’ and ‘Iustitia Dei,’” 21.
32 Luther, ““The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 419. More on this following in the section treating the Finnish School of Lutheran thought.
33 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 420.
34 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 420. See Mannermaa, Two Kinds of Love, 73–74.
35 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 420. Emphasis added.
36 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 423.
37 Hillebrand, “‘Christ Has Nothing to Do with Politics,’” 210–13.
38 Hillebrand, “‘Christ Has Nothing to Do with Politics,’” 211.
39 Hillebrand, “‘Christ Has Nothing to Do with Politics,’” 213.
40 Hillebrand, “‘Christ Has Nothing to Do with Politics,’” 214–15. The 1522 work by Luther is “A Sincere Admonition by Martin Luther to All Christians to Guard against Insurrection and Rebellion,” in Christian in Society 2, vol. 45, Luther's Works, 57–74.
41 LW 45. See Hendrix, “Luther,” 88–91.
42 Hillebrand, “‘Christ Has Nothing to Do with Politics,’” 215.
43 LW 45:81. Luther seems to reference v. 44 when he says to “make friends with your accuser,” LW 45: 81.
44 LW 45:83, 106.
45 Whitford, “Luther's Political Encounters,” 189. Here Luther has in mind not only the injustices he has suffered from the German nobility, but also their rote hypocrisy. Luther argues that if the emperor tried to take a castle or lands from these same nobles, they would “find themselves obliged to resist,” but that “when it comes to fleecing the poor or venting their spite on the word of God, it becomes a matter of ‘obedience to imperial command,’” LW 45, 84.
46 LW 45:86–87.
47 LW 45:88–90. These are the two uses of the law, according to Luther.
48 LW 45:88.
49 LW 45:88–90.
50 LW 45:88–89.
51 This is because Christians already “have in their heart the Holy Spirit, who both teaches and makes them to do injustice to no one,” LW 45: 89.
52 LW 45:92.
53 Luther, “Matt. 5:38–42, The Sermon on the Mount,” LW 21, 109. See Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 403–04.
54 LW 45:91, 101. See LW 21:108.
55 LW 45:96.
56 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 423. See LW 45, 98.
57 LW 21:106–08.
58 LW 45:92.
59 LW 45:95–96. Emphasis added. Luther declares the two opposing issues harmonized (96). He says further on that “the one who loves his enemies and is perfect leaves the law alone and does not use it to demand an eye for any eye. Neither does he restrain the non-Christians, however, who do not love their enemies and who do wish to make use of the law; indeed, he lends help that these laws may hinder the wicked from doing worse … he may and should wield it and invoke it to restrain wickedness and to defend godliness,” LW 45, 103.
60 LW 21:110.
61 See Braaten and Jenson, eds., Union with Christ; and Kärkkäinen, “‘Drinking from the Same Wells with Orthodox and Catholics.’” See also Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004).
62 Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith, 4.
63 See Carl R. Trueman, “Is the Finnish Line the New Beginning? A Critical Assessment of the Reading of Luther Offered by the Helsinki Circle,” Westminster Theological Journal 65 (2003): 231–44, at 233. See also Jenson's response in Robert W. Jenson, “Response to Mark Seifrid, Paul Metzger, and Carl Trueman on Finnish Luther Research,” Westminster Theological Journal 65 (2003): 245–50.
64 Pelikan, “The Gospel as the Treasure of the Church,” 150–55.
65 Pelikan, “The Gospel as the Treasure of the Church,” 151.
66 Pelikan, “The Gospel as the Treasure of the Church,” 152–53.
67 Pelikan, “The Gospel as the Treasure of the Church,” 154.
68 A point that Pelikan echoes in “The Gospel as the Treasure of the Church”: “Thus Luther's ‘forensic’ doctrine of imputation, as made precise by Melanchthon, gained dominance in the confessional interpretations of justification (whether Lutheran, Calvinist, or Arminian) over other ways of speaking that could also find a legitimate place within the full range of Reformation thought,” 152. This includes Luther's own position, Pelikan notes, for “In a sermon delivered about the same time, he attacked those among recent scholastic thinkers who located the forgiveness of sins and justification in a sheer act of divine imputation.” See “The Gospel as the Treasure of the Church,” 154.
69 Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith, 4.
70 Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith, 5. See Braaten and Jenson, eds., “Introduction,” Union with Christ, viii; and Mannermaa, “Why Is Luther So Fascinating?,” in Union with Christ, 14–15.
71 Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith, 5. This is part of a larger conversation in the Finnish school surrounding the philosophical heritage of Lutheran theology following the Formula of Concord (1577). Mannermaa summarizes Risto Saarinen's 1989 dissertation that sought to read against the neo-Kantian ontology of Hermann Lotze that relativized metaphysics in Luther's works in favor of a transcendental interpretation, which, asserting the inaccessibility of being-in-itself, suggested that the God-human relationship is purely personal-ethical, and known only by effect. Lotze's epistemology thus mimicked his ontological assumptions, as he suggested that the object of knowledge is ultimately separated from the knower and is known merely by its effects, a step Saarinen notes that Luther does not make. This interpretation led to an understanding of Christ present in faith by union of will, where what we can know is God affecting our will as the union of the human and the divine. See Mannermaa, “Why Is Luther So Fascinating?,” 4–9.
72 Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith, 40–41. I explore this further in what follows. See Mannermaa, “Why Is Luther So Fascinating?,” 10–12.
73 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 409.
74 Mannermaa, “Justification and Theosis in Lutheran-Orthodox Perspective,” 27.
75 Pelikan, “The Gospel as the Treasure of the Church,” 145–46.
76 Peura, “Christ as Favor and Gift (donum),” 53. See Pelikan, who comments, quoting Luther, that the truths of the Apostle's Creed, for example, are true as “they were true ‘for me,’ a phrase that one was to ‘accept with a sure faith and apply to himself’ without doubting.” See Pelikan, “The Gospel as the Treasure of the Church,” 154.
77 Peura, “Christ as Favor and Gift (donum),” 53. See Mannermaa, “Justification and Theosis in Lutheran-Orthodox Perspective,” 32.
78 LW 32:207. See Peura, “Christ as Favor and Gift (donum),” 53–54.
79 LW 32:208–09.
80 LW 32:229ff.
81 LW 32:229. Emphasis added.
82 LW 32:232, 235. Luther says further on: “For although he has justified us through the gift of faith, and although he becomes favorable to us through his grace, yet he wants us to rely on Christ so that we will not waver in ourselves and in these his gifts, nor be satisfied with the righteousness which has begun in us unless it cleaves to and flows from Christ's righteousness, and so that no fool, having once accepted the gift, will think himself already contented and secure,” LW 32:236.
83 LW 32:236. See Peura, “Christ as Favor and Gift (donum),” 56–60.
84 Mannermaa, “Introduction,” in Christ Present in Faith, 1–9. See Kärkkäinen, “‘Drinking from the Same Wells with Orthodox and Catholics,” 85.
85 Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith, 41.
86 Mannermaa, “Justification and Theosis in Lutheran-Orthodox Perspective,” 33.
87 Martin Luther, “Pentecost, or Festival of the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit: Third Sermon. John 14, 23–31,” in Church Postil, Volume 2: Gospels—Pentecost or Missionary Sermons, trans. John Nicholas Lenker, vol. 12, The Precious and Sacred Writings of Martin Luther, ed. John Nicholas Lenker (Minneapolis: Lutherans In All Lands Co., 1907), 316. Mannermaa quotes this postil in “Justification and Theosis in Lutheran-Orthodox Perspective,” 33. Mannermaa also quotes Luther's Christmas Sermon (1514), where the Reformer said: “Just as the word of God became human flesh, so it is certainly also necessary that the flesh may become word. In other words: God becomes man so that man may become God.” See Mannermaa, “Why Is Luther So Fascinating?,” 11. I have decided to foreground the postil from 1544, given that one of Trueman's major critiques of the Finnish School is an overreliance on early, so-called pre-Reformation texts of Luther. This is explored in the following.
88 Mannermaa, “Why Is Luther So Fascinating?,” 11.
89 Peura, “Christ as Favor and Gift (donum),” 50–51. See Mannermaa, “Why Is Luther So Fascinating?,” 10.
90 Trueman, “Is the Finnish Line a New Beginning?,” 239. Trueman's example (that Laffin repeats) of Luther's “realistic” language of Christ's presence in the elements of the supper not being itself indicative of divinization I find intriguing, but ultimately unhelpful. It seems to me a false equivalency to say what occurs by union of Christ to the elements might be translated to explain what happens by union of Christ to human beings. The bread and wine are not divinized; their substances are unchanged. That is granted. Theosis does not concern sacramental elements, however, but human beings made in the image and likeness of God. Like the elements, the human substance remains unchanged in unio personalis, and there is no confusion of natures. Nevertheless, participation by humans in the divine nature remains for Luther a powerful part of the promise of God by grace and gift through faith. As the Reformer argues, “[Christ] does not want us to halt in what has been received, but rather to draw near from day to day so that we may be fully transformed into Christ,” LW 32:235.
91 Trueman, “Is the Finnish Line a New Beginning?,” 239.
92 This is the main contention against Trueman made by Olli-Pekka Vainio, “Luther and Theosis: A Response to the Critics of Finnish Luther Research,” Pro Ecclesia 23, no. 4 (November 1, 2015): 460–63.
93 Trueman, “Is the Finnish Line a New Beginning?,” 236–37.
94 Oberman, “‘Iustitia Christi’ and ‘Iustitia Dei,’” 7–9.
95 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis, Chapters 1–5, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, trans. George V. Schick, vol. 1, Luther's Works (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1958), 115.
96 Regarding Luther's metaphysics and use of ontology, see Sammeli Juntunen, “Luther and Metaphysics: What Is the Structure of Being according to Luther?” in Union with Christ, 129–56; and Jenson, “Luther's Contemporary Theological Significance,” in The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther, 281–84.
97 Peura, “Christ as Favor and Gift (donum),” 60. On the contestation over deification, see Trueman, “Is the Finnish Line the New Beginning?” 239; and Laffin, “Ontology and Politics,” 43.
98 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 409.
99 Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith, 45, emphasis original. See Jenson, who notes that “but except for some turns of diction, [Luther] could be any of the Greek fathers,” “Luther's Contemporary Theological Significance,” in The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther, 281.
100 This is the significance of katabasis and anabasis in Vladimir Lossky's account of deification. This, as well as a deeper discussion of theosis as it relates to justification, is taken up by Roland Chia, “Salvation as Justification and Deification,” Scottish Journal of Theology 64, no. 2 (2011): 130. Chia notes as well that, as “Simo Puera has pointed out, ‘Justification is not only a change of self-understanding, a new relation to God, or a new ethos of love. God changes the sinner ontologically in the sense that he or she participates in God and his divine nature, being made righteous and “a god,”’” “Salvation as Justification and Deification,” 134.
101 LW 21:109.
102 Peura, “Christ as Favor and Gift (donum),” 47.
103 LW 32:235.
104 Peura, “Christ as Favor and Gift (donum),” 51.
105 Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith, 49, 50. This phrasing is important insofar as Mannermaa argues (on page 54) that for Luther, sanctification “comes solely from Christ who is present and works in faith.”
106 Raunio, “Natural Law and Faith,” 96–124.
107 Raunio, “Natural Law and Faith,” 113.
108 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 418. Emphasis added.
109 Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” 420. Emphasis added.
110 LW 21:108–13. Luther says “Now, if someone asks whether a Christian may go to court or defend himself, the answer is simply no. A Christian is the kind of person who has nothing to do with this sort of secular existence and law. He belongs to a kingdom or realm where the only regulation should be prayer (Matt. 6:12): ‘Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.’ Here only mutual love and service should prevail, even toward people who do not love us, but who hate us, hurt and harm us. It is to these Christians that He says do not resist evil, that they should not even seek revenge, but that they should turn the other cheek to an assailant,” 108–09. He goes on to ask “But what if only your own person is involved and an injury or injustice has been done to you? Is it right to use force in guarding and defending yourself against this? The answer is no,” LW 21:111.
111 LW 21:109.
112 LW 21:113.
113 LW 32:235.
114 Raunio, “Natural Law and Faith,” 114.
115 Raunio, “Natural Law and Faith,” 114–17.
116 2 Cor. 5:17–18, 21 NRSV. Emphasis added.
117 Raunio, “Natural Law and Faith,” 115.
118 LW 45:91.
119 Raunio, “Natural Law and Faith,” 104. See LW:32, 226–27.
120 I offer sincere thanks to Professor Lisa Sowle Cahill, who encouraged me to see Luther's better demons, and in doing so, inspired this work.