In his annual end-of-year bid to evangelize infidels and nominal Christians (Dec. 24), columnist Cal Thomas thought it appropriate to call on a spiritual forebear he greatly admires: Martin Luther, the father of Protestantism, a movement whose 500th anniversary will occur in 2017, Thomas informed us.
Thomas presented Luther as preaching the truth about the meaning of Christ’s birth with a focus on the humility and poverty of Mary and Joseph, as contrasted with the pride of world leaders and the materialistic longings of humankind.
But consider the worth of Luther’s “affecting” Christmas sermon in the hard light of what he wrote in a treatise titled “On the Enslavement of the Will,” a work he considered all-important: “Necessity, not free will, is the controlling principle of our conduct. God is the author of what is evil in us as well as of what is good, and, just as he bestows happiness on those who do not merit it, so also does he damn others who deserve not their fate.”
Yes, you read that right.
Luther went on to declare that this doctrine of the enslaved will “must stand though the whole world … even fall into ruins.”
So much for Luther’s sermon on the Nativity. Thomas can keep it.
William LaRochelle, Lewiston
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