L. Daniel Cantey, Jr

Is there a connection between the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone and the political order of the modern West? Might the Western love of freedom and equality, as well as the emergence of Western totalitarianism, have a theoretical forerunner in the modern West’s fundamental theological doctrine of salvation, Martin Luther’s notion of justification by faith alone? Examining the religious experience that led Luther to formulate his doctrine of justification, we find freedom, equality, and totalitarian law held together such that the last is intrinsic to the realisation of the former two. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, I show how the divine law in Luther’s experience is totalitarian, while describing the arc of his experience with that law as one in which a more basic equality underlies his proclamation of freedom from the law’s demands. I then compare the pattern of Martin Luther’s experience of the divine law with the historical pattern of Marxist communism, noting that both began with great hope in the law, only to find it transform into a totalitarian monster.