Luther Begins a Reformation and Develops His Salvation Equation
Five Hundred Years Ago
In 1517 Martin Luther posted his 95 theses in Wittenberg, decrying some of the abuses within the Catholic church. But it took a few years for him to get to the point of calling the Pope, the “Anti-Christ,” and throwing away the need for the Catholic sacraments. During this time Luther was developing his idea about “justification through faith alone.” He said he based his new understanding on scripture alone, “sola scriptura.” But did he? Luther had concluded that because we were freely justified (made right with God) through grace, that all we needed was faith. This fit neatly with his background as an Augustinian friar, as it built on Augustine’s idea of predestination. So Luther’s salvation equation was Faith + 0 = Salvation. No “works” were needed. But was Luther right? More
A CBC radio program called The Current, recently lent itself as a megaphone to the provocative idea that a pill is the next best thing to improve the “human animal.”— That’s the label Neil Levy, deputy director of psycho-babble at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, in the U.K. applies to you and me. He wants to formulate and administer a “morality pill” to targeted segments of the population.
