God's gifts to humankind: a legal-philosophical interpretation of Luther's views on ownership and the natural right to property

The collapse of the medieval political and social order, the rise of the nation state and the emergent absolutism of civil rulers, meant that the early Reformers had to make a clearer demarcation between the natural right to private property and the moral conditions giving rise to such a right, and a clearer delineation of the duties of civil authorities in dealing with private property in civil society. Luther's view that natural right presupposes the existence of moral duty and is intricately connected with the moral uprightness of the owner's activities, produces a number of important perspectives still relevant for the debate concerning the natural rights of individuals to own property and to have the sphere of liberty attached to this right adequately protected.