Selected Writings of Martin Luther as presented in A History of Lutheranism by Eric W. Gritsch. Fortress Press, Minneapolis: 2002.

"Trestise on Good Works" 1520: Good works are the natural consequences of a truly trusting relationship between the faithful and God, grounded in the atonement of Christ. The divine mandate to do good, summarized in the Decalogue, can only be fulfilled when Christ has become the driving force within the faithful. Consequently, faith is not a decision to try to do good or an assent to divine teachings, mediated by the church, but rather the source of all relationships of life on earth. "Faith, therefore, does not originate in works; neither do works create faith, but faith must spring up and flow from the blood and wounds and death of Christ."

"The Babylonian Captivity of the Church" 1520: [The sacraments of baptism and communion] are sufficient for Christian life: baptism initiates believers into a never-ending relationship with Christ, and the Lord's Supper sustains them during their pilgrimage on earth.

Luther published an anti-Semite paper in 1543 claiming that God had deserted the Jews because they did not accept Christ as their Messiah. This claim, however, violates Luther's theological rule that one should never speculate about the will of the hidden God; one should only communicate God's love, not divine wrath.

One must pray all the time. "Otherwise, if you attempt to help yourself by your own thoughts and resources, you will only make the matter worse and give the devil a wider opening."

Three types of law:
Civil law: creates justice in the face of chaos created by sin and evil.
Theological law: leads to repentance and to the gospel in the face of human failures and removes sin.
"Third use:" provides instruction for believers regarding their witness in the world.

"Original sin is not the nature itself but an accidens (that is, a contingent lack and defect in nature)."

Regarding good works: "Faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, so sure and certain that the believer would stake life itself on it a thousand times. This knowledge of an confidence in God's grace makes people glad and bold and happy in dealing with God and with all creatures."

"A Catechetical Way"
• Luther adovcated a spiritual equality between clergy and laity based on baptism; he made the ordained and nonordained partners in Christian formation through worship and education. Accordingly, participants in worship need to understand and become part of the Sunday liturgy.
• Worship through word and sacrament is the inhaling of divine power, as it were, and making a living in the world is the exhaling. Enduring instruction, grounded in catechetics, is necessary for proper public worship (liturgy) and Christian behavior in the world (ethics).
• If Scripture is the "touch stone" by which all Christian teaching is to be judged, then the catechism is the whetstone that sharpens minds and shapes hearts in the church. Luther's catechisms (which was the ancient catechism on the Creed and Lord's Prayer, which Augustine (354-430) had added the Decalogue, and to which Luther had added the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion) became the blueprints for a theological vision of existence under God, who - as a creator, redeemer, and Holy Spirit - prusues, recruits, and employs human creaturs as witnesses to unrivaled divine majesty and unconditional love.