Martin Luther and John Calvin?

Question

Martin Luthers "faith alone"

and

John Calvins "predestination"

how are they diffrent?

Answer 1

oh my what a question.  

Ok by faith alone.  Your faith has made you whole and all that.

Calvin is grossly misunderstood today.  His stance was " by grace alone"  in other wordss, faith and works have nothing to do with salvation.

This includes the idea that if you accept Christ as your personal lord and savior etc.

Your salvation is known by God before you are born and no work of you own (including accepting Christ) will save you or condemn  you.

your fate is known before you are born.

this is what predestination means.  More like "It is known".

The good part is that your acceptance is part of it only because it was known before you were born that you would accept salvation (not that I believe in this, I just understand what he was saying) and so it is predestined to be.

Luther followed the accepted Catholic thinking that if you had faith in salvation then you were saved. Regardlesss of your actions.

You have to understand that there are volumes of books on this subject and it can not really be explained in this forum.

Answer 2

I'm not a theologian, so I apologise in advance to anyone who believes I am misrepresenting their beliefs.

The accepted teaching before Luther was that a person had to do certain things in order (mostly as instructed by the Roman Catholic Church) to be a good Christian and to get into Heaven when they died. Luther believed that all that was required to get into Heaven was to have a genuine faith, and that good deeds would probably follow from that faith, but that absolute obedience to the church or carrying out specific rituals were not necessary. Faith alone was enough.

Calvin's teaching of predestination I find harder to convey fairly, but it boils down to the idea that as God is all-knowing and all-powerful, He will know who has genuine faith (and therefore the ticket to Heaven) even before that person knows it. Even beyond knowing in advance what will happen, God also has the power to control what happens, and Calvin taught that God will choose who is going to be saved, and that once He has chosen, then no mere mortal can resist that.

Answer 3

See the links below.

Answer 4

Martin Luther believed that faith in God, Christ, and following the laws of Christianity (10 Commandments) would get one into heaven. This was a reaction against the Catholic Church's sale of indulgences where one could "buy" their way into heaven by paying to have their sins erased. There was an old saying that the Church's servants would say; "once the coin hits the box, a soul from h**l pops." Luther believed that the true believer did not have to be rich or poor, only pure of heart and devoted to God. Lutheranism broke off into many other branches of Protestantism.

Calvin believed in predestination. He took Luther's ideas and turned them around slightly. Calvin believed that people were chosen at birth to go to heaven and that others were doomed to h**l. There was basically nothing that could change your final destination. Calvin proclaimed that there were signs of election into heaven, ways that people could tell they were going to heaven. A few of the signs of election were material wealth and number of surviving children. Calvinism eventually breaks off into many other branches of Protestantism, including Presbyterianism.