ABSTRACT
The great Reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin thought of themselves not as philosophers or politicians, but first and last as theologians and students of the Word of God. Luther and Calvin are at opposite poles as far as mood and expression are concerned. Luther is flamboyant, vivid, impulsive, immensely readable, frequently exaggerating his true position or contradicting what he said elsewhere in order to put over a point forcefully. The root and core of all reformed theology is the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The Reformers break with the medieval tradition not only in their more radical statement of the problem of sin and man's fallen condition, but also in the solution they present. Luther and Calvin find themselves returning to the teaching of St Paul and St Augustine and rejecting virtually the whole of medieval theology as Pelagian, that is, believing that man can in some sense earn his salvation by his own efforts.
