Questions Week 2:

9/15/2018

Question 1: Explain Luther’s main points in the section you read from On the Freedom of a Christian.

Answer: Luther was explaining that it is by faith alone that a man is to get into heaven, not the good deeds a man has done. He encourages good deeds, saying they are a way to show your love of God and the earth he’s created; but he says they are not a way to get into heaven. He says the Christian has nothing to gain from preforming ‘sacred acts’ such as pilgrimages and fasting, but should look only to the word of God and the gospel for salvation.

Question 2:  Explain Calvin’s main points in the selection you read from the Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Answer: Calvin was explaining to Francis the first belief’s of the protestants, and how they differed from Anabaptists. The Protestants were being persecuted at the time, and Calvin was trying to explain to the king that the Protestant movement was not trying to take down the Catholic church. It was instead a throw back to the old testament, having faith in the way the Christian faith had been in the past.

Question 3:  How does Calvin answer those who say predestination makes God into a being who dispenses justice unequally?

Answer: He says that questioning the will of God, and the will he’s put into place is extremely arrogant. ” If to make it appear that our salvation flows entirely from the good mercy of God, we must be carried back to the origin of election, then those who would extinguish it, wickedly do as much as in them lies to obscure what they ought most loudly to extol, and pluck up humility by the very roots.” He says that those that question God have already proved God has sentenced them to something less than heaven, and are in fact proving his points by merely questioning them.