Martin Luther and Stanley Hauerwas

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Unlike ahuerwas, Luther’s main ethics derive from the doctrine of justification and grace. His key foundation for his ethics is justification by faith alone. By using Romans 1:17, “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith” (KJV), Luther determines only by grace, a person can be saved. This grace, however, is imparted to the people, not infused. Therefore, no matter how perfect or how righteous a person may be, if he or she is trying to please God through the works, the actions performed are meaningless in the eyes of God. this is because if people are doing the work to please God, it is the idea of people saving themselves, and not God saving the people. People can only relate to God if, and only if, it is through faith; people can never relate to God through the accomplishments and the actions they make. He expresses this as he said:

Grace cannot stand it when we want to give something to God or establish merit or pay him with our works. This is the greatest of blasphemies and idolatries and is nothing less than the denial and even ridicule of God. These offerings of works spell the elimination of thank-offerings, which cannot exist alongside them. Whoever wants to earn and win by works certainly does not expect to receive anything for nothing or through grace. Instead, he wants to do business and haggle with God. But whoever receives nothing by grace will not give thanks either (Luther’s Works, Vol. 14, 34)

However, once people are justified and saved, even though the works are impure, God still accepts the actions. This is because according to Luther, “works should be done as an exercise of faith” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 44, 97). Therefore, people will not believe “[they are] pleasing to God on account of what [they do], but rather by confident trust in [the] favor [they do] such tasks for a gracious and loving God” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 44, 97). For example, the commandment of “love your neighbor as yourself” is then applied not to please God, but primarily for the neighbor. Faith alone is the true service of God. And once you become justified, everything a person does, every action, “whether they be great, small, short, long, many, or few”, becomes signification (Luther’s Works, Vol. 44, 26-27).

One of Luther’s paradoxical phrases that clearly justify this idea is when he states, “A Christian is a perfectly free Lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all” (Luther, 344). The statement he makes demonstrates that all people are perfectly free by the grace of God. Therefore, there is not an idea of “pleasing God”. However, once people realize the fact that they are saved by the grace of God, people have to act it, not to receive grace from God, but to love the neighbor, help the neighbor, and to enter into an intimate relationship with the neighbor. All the actions that a person performs are from the certainty of being saved. If there is no justification of grace, then the actions performed are not signification as the idea of saving oneself comes into play.

The above paragraph is intimately connected to Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms. According to Luther, “God rules in a twofold way” (Althaus and Schultz, 45). Luther claims that “God has ordained two governments: the spiritual, by which the Holy Spirit produces Christians and righteous people under Christ; and the temporal, which restrains the un-Christian and [the] wicked” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 45, 91). God works in both the spiritual kingdom and the secular kingdom. The difference is that in the spiritual kingdom, “men are to become good and righteous, so that with [the] righteousness they may attain eternal life”, whereas in the secular kingdom, men “who do not want to be good and righteous to eternal life may be forced to become good and righteous in the eyes of the world” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 46, 99). In the spiritual kingdom, even though people are perfectly free and people do not have to please God, they have to obey the commands of loving their neighbor and loving God because they have to do it for their neighbor because those are the given rules in the spiritual kingdom. However, in the secular kingdom, God rules over the unjustified through the laws of the government.

People who are justified by grace have to participate in both the spiritual kingdom and the secular kingdom. This is because as a Christian, once a person is justified by grace, because the commands are given by God, he or she has to act upon those commands. However, even as a Christian a person has to participate in the secular kingdom because it is his or her civic duty in the world to participate in the commands that revolve around preserving “marriage, […] family, the entire household, as well as property, business, and all the stations and vocations which God has instituted” (Althaus and Schultz, 47). People who are not justified by grace only have to and can participate in the secular kingdom. This is because Luther states that “everyone should do his duty” and that if people were concerned about their secular righteousness, “there would be no rascality or injustice, but sheer righteousness and blessedness on earth” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 21, 26). According to Althaus and Schultz, Luther believed “as long as mankind belongs to the kingdom of this world, it stands under the law” (51). There is no “ought” because people cannot get beyond the justification of grace; people cannot be more righteous than the moment they are justified.

In conclusion, Martin Luther’s ethics and Stanley Hauerwas’s ethics differ because of their view on the Aristotelian approach to ethics. After reading his works and works on him, Luther demonstrates how his ethics is founded on scripture and the gospels. This is why he was able to create his ethics of justification and grace. However, even though Luther’s ethics may make sense to him, it is challenging for people to understand how there is no developmental progress or a goal of becoming more like Christ in his ethics. Stanley Hauerwas demonstrates a strong progression to the goal, which is to reflect the kingdom of God. It is easier for people to know what to do in the world in order to obtain the goal. His ethics is created in order for people to reach the goal. Even though Luther and Hauerwas are different, they both have impacted the Christian world greatly.

Works Cited

Althaus, Paul, and Robert, C. Schultz. The Ethics of Martin Luther. Philadelphia:

Fortress, 1972. Print.

Grenz,