ABSTRACT
In A Defense of Sound and Orthodox Doctrine, John Calvin (1509-64) responds to the widespread accusation that Martin Luther (1483-1546) denigrates human responsibility and the role of good works in Christian life by explaining that if Luther “exaggerated” his case at the beginning of the Reformation, it was only because such exaggeration was necessary to overturn a “false and pernicious reliance on works” which had long been “intoxicating” the Christian conscience.1 Casting Luther’s theological accents in a broader historical light, Calvin rejects persistent incriminations that the “whole party of Lutherans”2 (i.e., Protestants) denies good works, but concedes that Luther’s rhetoric against works and the law may have indeed been exaggerated.3 Calvin writes:
When Luther spoke in this way about good works, he was not seeking to deprive them of their praise and their reward before God. Nor did he ever say that God does not accept them or that he will not reward them; but he wanted to show only what they are worth if they are considered by themselves apart from God’s fatherly generosity....But, you will say, Luther exaggerates. I can grant this, but only when I say that he had a good reason which drove him to such exaggeration; that is, he saw that the world was so deprived of sense by a false and perilous confidence in works, a kind of deadly drowsiness, that it needed not a voice and words to awaken it but a trumpet call, a peal of thunder and thunderbolts.4
