Martin Luther and Thomas Aquinas Against the Pelagians I Dr. Erik Dempsey

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

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Summary

Dr. Erik Dempsey explores the positions of Martin Luther and Thomas Aquinas against Pelagianism, highlighting their shared rejection of justification by human effort and their nuanced theological differences on grace, merit, and free will.

This lecture was given on March 18th, 2024, at Regent University.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speaker:

Professor Erik Dempsey an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Departments of Government, Classics, and Religious Studies, and is the Assistant Director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas. He has taught at the University of Texas at Austin for over ten years, during which time he has offered classes in the history of political philosophy, on the Bible and its interpreters, on American political thought, on classical philosophy and literature, and others. His favorite classes to teach are Jerusalem and Athens, a class comparing the political, moral, and theological ideas of the Hebrew Bible to Aristotle's, and the Question of Relativism, a class on what he considers the central quandary of our time. He writes primarily about Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, and he is currently studying John Locke's commentaries on St. Paul's epistles. Last but not least, he is an Eagle Scout.

Keywords: Augustinian Theology, Christian Anthropology, Ecumenical Dialogue, Galatians Commentary, Grace and Merit, Justification Doctrine, Liberal Modernity, Martin Luther, Original Sin, Pelagianism

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.2	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:12.5	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:18.5	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at
0:21.9	to mystic institute.org. The topic of my talk tonight is justification in Thomas and Luther,
0:30.9	and particularly the way that both of them take a stand against the Pelagians. I'm going to try to focus somewhat on the
0:42.1	similarities between Thomas and Luther, though by the end I'll be talking more about their differences.
0:50.5	Before I get into the substance of the talk, I wanted to begin by saying that my goal,
0:56.5	my kind of simple goal for this talk, has been to encourage a certain amount of ecumenical
1:03.9	dialogue by getting Catholics among you to read and think about Martin Luther and by getting Protestants among you, whom I learned
1:13.1	in the ride over, are a significant majority around here, somewhat to my surprise.
1:18.2	I thought it was going to be 50-50, apparently not, getting some of you to read and take
1:23.5	seriously the ideas of Thomas Aquinas.
1:29.4	I think it's a wonderful thing that the Thomistic Institute, this organization of which
1:35.5	I've been, which has been such a wonderful home for me, has a presence at such a strongly
1:41.3	Protestant campus.
1:43.4	It seems to me that there are some real threads in the Christian
1:47.0	intellectual tradition shared across sects that are important to recognize and encourage.
1:54.5	And today, I want to talk about at least some of those and give some indication of some of the shared space. I should say,
2:06.0	and I'll try to give some evidence for this over the course of the talk, that I am of the
2:11.1	opinion that on many issues, the differences between Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther
2:16.8	are somewhat exaggerated.
	...

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