Martin Luther on the final state of the lost
Eternal conscious punishment
For all outside of Christianity, whether heathen, Turks, Jews, or false Christians and hypocrites, although they believe in, and worship, only one true God, yet know not what His mind towards them is, and cannot expect any love or blessing from Him; therefore they abide in eternal wrath and damnation.
THE POSITION
Those outside Christ remain under wrath permanently. Luther's statement comes not from an eschatology chapter but from the Creed: everyone who does not have Christ, however monotheistic, 'abides in eternal wrath and damnation,' because they do not know what God's mind toward them is. The Small Catechism keeps the corresponding positive: Christ 'will come to judge the living and the dead,' and eternal life is given to all who believe in him.
46 And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
20 OTHERS HOLD THIS
See all 23 figures on the final state of the lost →ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Augustinian friar whose protest over indulgences opened the Reformation, and the theologian for whom justification by faith and the bondage of the will are the whole of the gospel. This entry rests on his own writings only — The Bondage of the Will (1525), the Smalcald Articles (1537), the Large and Small Catechisms (1529), Concerning Christian Liberty (1520), the Heidelberg Disputation (1518), the Church Postil and his biblical prefaces — and deliberately excludes the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord, which are not his.
Cite this page
"Martin Luther on the final state of the lost", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/luther/final-state (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/luther/final-state).