Luther: The Age of the Individual, 500 Years Ago
By Christine Helmer
What was actually celebrated in the year commemorating the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation? Many agree that the Reformation shaped the modern world in distinctive ways. Modern western values, such as the autonomy of the individual, the individual’s freedom from religious or political coercion, and the individual’s vocation in society, have been attributed to Luther’s innovations. Yet, is it the case that Luther insisted on individual freedom in the way moderns assume? Or did Luther understand the individual in a theological sense, namely in the Catholic sense of the self as necessarily preceded by and enlivened in the community.
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