Christianity & Law

Liberty is relational; it begins with our relationship with God. In Genesis, God repeatedly calls His creation “good” — exactly as He intended it. Jesus came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, restoring what was broken across three dimensions.

Fulfilling, Not Abolishing

In Matthew 5, on adultery: not only the act, but the lustful intent of the heart. The law points beyond the rule to God's purpose — how we should treat all people, not only our spouse.

Our reaction is that this is too demanding — a yoke. But the good news is that Jesus carried the burden, not us, and invites us into union with Him.

Law and liberty: comparing the two approaches

What is liberty?

Liberty can mean being able to choose. But what if our desires lead us toward things that harm us? This week asks whether freedom also requires a change in the person who chooses.

The course begins with humanity created for fellowship with God, a relationship damaged by rebellion and restored through Christ. Augustine connects this scriptural account to questions about human freedom. His influence on Luther and the Reformation helps us approach the place of the individual in law and political life.

Choosing and being free

Augustine, an early Christian theologian, argues that sin damages our will without destroying our ability to choose. We remain responsible for our actions, yet cannot restore ourselves to a right relationship with God unaided.

Imagine a balance scale. Pelagius, Augustine’s opponent, sees the will as evenly balanced: either side can be chosen without an inherited bias. Augustine sees weights already loading the scale toward evil. The scale still moves, but it is no longer balanced. Grace, God’s freely given help, heals this condition so that we can turn toward God.

Pelagius and Augustine

Why grace is needed

If our problem were simply ignorance, better instructions would be enough. Augustine thinks the problem reaches deeper: sin affects both our understanding and our desires. He explains our need for Christ through three images:

• Disease needs healing. Christ is the physician who restores a damaged human nature.
• Captivity needs liberation. Christ frees us from a power we cannot escape alone.
• Guilt needs pardon. Christ brings forgiveness for the sin that separates us from God.

Grace therefore does more than show us what is right. It enables a response we could not produce on our own. Good works matter, but they grow from God’s help rather than earn it.

In the vineyard parable (Matthew 20:1–16), some laborers work all day and others only an hour, yet all receive the same wage. Augustine sees the landowner’s generous promise as the key: the late arrivals receive what their hours alone could not earn. Likewise, salvation rests on God’s gracious promise, not the amount of merit we accumulate.

The connection to Luther

Martin Luther struggled with “the righteousness of God” in Romans 1:17. He understood it as the standard by which God judged sinners, and his efforts could not bring him peace. Augustine helped him see righteousness as a gift God gives, received through faith. This is called justification.

Faith is personal trust, not merely knowing that Gospel events happened. Luther compares it to boarding a ship: believing the ship exists differs from entrusting yourself to it. Through faith, the person is united with Christ. Faith receives God’s gift; it is not another achievement that earns salvation.

This returns us to liberty: freedom involves the restoration of the person’s relationship with God. That understanding prepares the course’s later questions about individual freedom, law, and political authority.

Remember these three ideas

• Having choices does not mean the will is free from sin.
• Grace heals and liberates; it does more than instruct.
• For Luther, righteousness is received through faith rather than achieved.

Discussion questions

1. 1How does Augustine’s theological perspective on free will, original sin, and divine grace help us understand the scriptural account of freedom better?
2. 2What insight on law and liberty do we gain from studying the Pelagian controversy of the early fifth century?
3. 3How did Augustine’s thoughts influence the Reformation-era thinkers, especially Martin Luther?

Augustine and the scriptural view

From Augustine’s gift to Luther’s tract

Week 2 ended with justification: righteousness is God’s gift, received through faith. Luther’s Freedom of a Christian (1520) asks what that gift does to a person’s standing — before God, before neighbor, and before earthly office. The syllabus names Calvin with Luther; this lecture follows John Witte’s reading of Luther’s tract.

Luther wrote on the eve of his excommunication. He dedicated the tract to Pope Leo X, yet refused the idea that dignity comes from office: pope and prince, clergy and laity, stand equal before God. That claim is the hinge between last week’s theology and this week’s questions about law.

Two paradoxes of the Christian

Luther’s picture of human dignity is not a simple elevation of the self. It is two paradoxes held at once. Every Christian is saint and sinner. Every Christian is lord of all and servant of all.

Luther’s warning sits inside the paradox: the more a person claims to be a saint, the more sinful that claim becomes; the more a person acts as a lord, the more that person is called to serve. Dignity here is not rank. It is this double life before God.

Faith, works, and vocation

One thing only is necessary for Christian life, righteousness, and freedom: the Word of God, the gospel of Christ. Faith is trust in that promise, not another achievement. This is the same gift Augustine helped Luther see, now pressed into a public claim: clergy are not a higher class of Christian, and the laity are not a lower one.

Good works remain. A person “does not live for himself alone; he lives only for others.” The shape of that service depends on the vocation in which God calls us to use our gifts. Works follow faith; they do not purchase it.

Two kingdoms

The 1520 tract was not a political manifesto. Spiritual freedom can coexist with political bondage. After the Peasants’ Revolt of 1525, Luther became still more wary of turning the priesthood of all believers into a program of earthly equality. He defended this with the two kingdoms.

What this still does in law

Witte traces three instincts that later Protestant politics kept, even when Protestants failed them in practice.

• Due process. Human nature is both sanctity and depravity. Adam, Eve, and Cain are given a hearing: evidence, a chance to answer, a stay of the ultimate sanction, and a further judgment. If God judges with procedure, human tribunals should as well. A theory of dignity that forgets sin is politically dangerous; one that forgets the image of God is no less so.
• Liberty as duty before God. Protestants can sound like later liberals when they defend liberty of conscience. The ground is different. The conscience is immune because it belongs to God, not because the self is sovereign. Rights protect the discharge of divine duties, not a sealed private will.
• Rights from duties. The Decalogue’s duties toward God become rights of worship and rest. Duties toward the neighbor — not to kill, steal, commit adultery, or bear false witness — become the neighbor’s rights to life, property, fidelity, and reputation. To claim such a right can be an act of neighbor-love: it calls the other person to keep a duty.

That last point is the hinge toward later weeks. Week 5 will ask why religious liberty can be treated as a foundational civil right. From Week 7 onward, Locke, Mill, and others will defend liberty on liberal terms. Luther’s sequence runs the other way: free in order to obey; rights in order to discharge duties. Rights without duties collapse into self-indulgence; duties without rights collapse into guilt.

Witte closes by reversing a familiar line about heaven and hell. Heaven is not the place without law. Hell is caprice, where no one knows what is coming. Heaven is due process, where each receives what is due.

Remember these three ideas

• The Christian is at once saint and sinner, lord and servant.
• Spiritual freedom does not abolish earthly law.
• For Luther, rights exist so that duties can be discharged.

Luther and the scriptural view

If faith requires conviction, can political power compel genuine worship? Early Christian arguments connect freedom of religion to human dignity, voluntary belief, and an allegiance that no earthly ruler can claim.

From spiritual freedom to civil liberty

Augustine and Luther ask how people become free before God. Religious liberty raises a related but distinct question: what may rulers compel in matters of faith? Freedom from sin and legal protection from religious coercion address different problems. A person can possess one without the other.

One aspect of civil liberty is freedom from state interference. Applied to religion, this concerns both personal conviction and the shared, public practice of faith. The early Christian case examined here rests on a simple claim: forced religious observance cannot produce sincere belief.

The case for calling religion “the first liberty”

“First liberty” expresses an argument about religion’s place in constitutional development. Three claims support it; they do not establish that every other liberty has a single religious origin or that religious freedom is equally protected everywhere.

Philippians: citizenship shaped by Christ

In Philippians 3:20, politeuma is commonly translated as “citizenship.” In 1:27, the related verb politeuomai calls believers to conduct their lives worthily of the gospel. Both terms carry civic associations: belonging to a people and living according to its shared pattern of life.

Dorothea Bertschman interprets this pattern as a “heavenly constitution.” Here, constitution means a community’s governing way of life, rather than a modern written constitution or a blueprint for government. The church lives among earthly communities while owing its ultimate allegiance to God.

The content of that way of life matters. Philippians 2:5–11 places Christ’s humility, self-giving obedience, and lordship at its center. Heavenly citizenship calls believers to serve one another rather than pursue status or selfish advantage. Divine authority thus shapes a community’s conduct and provides a standpoint from which earthly power can be judged.

From imperial toleration to religious freedom

Robert Louis Wilken highlights a change in the language of Roman policy. Galerius presented an end to persecution as imperial leniency. In 313, a letter issued by Licinius in his and Constantine’s names, following their meeting at Milan, offered Christians and others freedom to follow their chosen religion. It is commonly known as the Edict of Milan.

This was a significant argument and policy shift, not yet a modern constitutional guarantee. The distinction is between a ruler’s discretionary favor and a claim that religious choice deserves protection.

Tertullian and Lactantius: why coercion fails

Writing in defense of persecuted Christians, Tertullian describes choosing one’s worship as a human right and natural capacity. His language suggests that this capacity precedes the ruler’s permission. His phrase libertatem religionis means freedom of religion.

Lactantius develops the argument from sincerity: worship requires inward commitment, so persuasion must address the mind and will. Force can compel an outward act, but it cannot produce the conviction that gives worship its meaning.

Their concern extends beyond private thoughts or prayer at home. They defend the ability of Christian communities to practice their faith publicly without persecution. The argument therefore connects personal conviction with communal religious life.

Human dignity and the limits of Caesar

Tertullian connects human freedom to the image of God in Genesis 1:26–27: human beings possess reason and the capacity to choose and act. In his interpretation of Jesus’s saying about Caesar, the coin bears Caesar’s image, while the person bears God’s. Money may be owed to Caesar; the person’s ultimate allegiance belongs to God.

This supplies a theological reason to limit political claims over worship. Wilken presents these arguments about dignity and the will as contributing to the later development of natural rights and religious freedom. They are an important historical contribution, rather than a complete modern theory of rights.

Religious liberty and the scriptural view

Key ideas

• Religious liberty challenges the claim that rulers may command sincere belief.
• Heavenly citizenship joins ultimate allegiance to God with Christlike humility and service.
• Early Christian defenses of voluntary worship helped articulate limits on political authority and arguments for later rights.