Martin Luther On the Freedom of a Christian Man (Response Paper) Essay

Martin Luther On the Freedom of a Christian Man (Response Paper) - Essay Example is period, Reformation evolved as a movement which severely criticized and demanded reform of the Catholic way of life, as initially expressed in the campaigns of Martin Luther.[1] To address this issue, Luther challenged the Catholic understanding of justification and salvation by faith by examining the paradox. Through his endeavour in On the Freedom of a Christian, he proposed that â€Å"A Christian man is the most free lord of all† yet â€Å"a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all† in an attempt to contrast what is inwardly renewing to that which is outwardly perishing. By the time corruption and nepotism within the Catholic system of papacy became exposed to the public [2], people who had long suffered the rigid structure of worship along with poverty and social inequality began to perceive the crisis in Catholicism and how they had been which relates to salvation and find out that religious affairs are irrelevant to spiritual progress in the absence of faith and acknowledgment of God’s word for â€Å"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God† (Matt. 4:4). Eventually, they inquired in meditation whether a man is justified by visible efforts that build him up on the outside or by invisible faith which gathers him up on the inside. Were they certain about what they thought all along – that men attain salvation by good works? Or must salvation be achieved in the light of faith which depends not on physical exertions but on God’s Word which sustains the spirit? If the Catholic doctrine truly works with efficacy as taught by the ordained members of the church, why did it appear that most followers remained unrelieved of confusion and suffering? In order to establish a solid argument in protest of the theological views against which such queries were raised, Luther made ‘faith’ central to his discourse of On the Freedom of a Christian where he described faith as â€Å"a living fountain, springing up