When Luther spoke of the faith that could justify men and women he did not, of course, mean “belief” in our modern sense but an act of total trust in the absolute power of God. “Faith,” he explained in one of his sermons, “does not require information, knowledge and certainty, but a free surrender and joyful bet on his unfelt, untried and unknown goodness.”34 Luther had no time for the “false theologian,” who “looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things that have actually happened.”35 Far from giving a clear vision, faith brought “a sort of
...more
