Comparing Christian Liberty, Utopia, and The Prince Essay examples --

Christian Liberty, Utopia, and The Prince    "A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none...A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant to all, subject to none." (Luther Pg. 7) These lines show what Luther is truly about. In Christian Liberty, Luther believes in the reestablishing of God as the inner authority. In Utopia, Thomas More believes the power should be in one group and that the rest of the common people in the society should all be equal like a communist society. In The Prince, Machievelli believes that the power is within the prince. I choose Christian Liberty as the best form of authority because it is the closest to being an honest and true way of authority. Although none of the books portray ideal authority, Christian Liberty is the closest to describing the best authority out of the three because of the emphasis on a moral society with less corruption, a reformation in the people's spiritual selves and less concentration of wealth in the hands of the religious hierarchy in society so t hat it would become more of an egalitarian society. In Christian Liberty, Martin Luther portrays the corruption in the church and in the government and explains how this could all be solved with the reformation of the spirit self being ruled by God as an all-powerful force. "Therefore we must also preach the word of grace and the promise of forgiveness by which faith is taught and aroused. Without this word of grace the works of the law, contrition, penitence, and all the rest are done and taught in vain." (Luther page 27). In this quote Luther says that you need to have a spiritual relationship in order to repent for your sins and to do good works otherwise your good works mean nothing t... ...g of the scriptures and writings of God. Martin Luther with his system of authority based around a personal understanding of The Bible is better then The Prince who uses the rule of the one and Utopia's rule of the few. Works Cited: Jones, W. T. Masters of Political Thought. Ed. Edward, McChesner, and Sait. Vol. 2. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947. Luther, Martin "Martin Luther's Treatise on Christian Liberty [Freedom of a Christian]." Christian Liberty. Trans. W. A. Lambert. Fortress Press, 1957. Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Trans. Hill Thompson. Norwalk: The Easton Press, 1980. More, Sir Thomas. Utopia: A New Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism. Ed. and trans. Robert M. Adams. Toronto: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1988. Nelson, William, ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Utopia. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.