>It's a debate I have with my born again christian friends who
>I find have a weird, 'Im awesome and Jesus is magic' view as
>opposed to the idea of old school Irish catholic original sin
>I grew up with.

That's extremely on-brand for Irish Catholic education, but as nasty and harsh as it is - it presupposes something hopeful that isn't present in Luther's thought: that in spite of our awfulness, we ARE capable of holiness which is brought about by grace but which we cooperate in and:

a)is our own
b)is pleasing to God

In short very short: we can BE good in the Catholic position. This is because sin is not natural to us (this can be a confusing difference because we are still born into sin in this construction, but "natural" refers to our creation in the image of God) we can, by cooperating with God's grace, be holy and please God. So, we can be saved by God's justice.

For Luther, justice was absolutely something you didn't want. We were born into sin (regardless of whether it was natural to us) and sin was our legacy. Asking God for justice means asking to be judged based on what we were - which is an objectively terrible idea in his system. Since there is no righteousness which can be properly *ours* being judged fairly means hell. Hell for me. Hell for you. Hell for everybody.

Instead, Luther sought only God's mercy. Mercy means God sees you for what you are and saves you anyhow. From his initial "simul doctrine" came a WHOLE bunch of different types of righteousness, all with the same basic thrust: that any way in which you are good is not truly yours but rather comes from Christ's sacrifice.

1. Inherent righteousness is righteousness which is internal to you. Luther said that we don't possess this in any way that effects our salvation.

2. Imputed righteousness is righteousness which is alien to us (from Christ's suffering and death on the cross) but which is given to us (freely, without merit) and we are saved based on it. Luther advocated this view. I like to think of it as a coat made of holiness. It's Jesus' coat, but he loans it to you.

3. Infused righteousness is righteousness freely given, unearned, and which we don't really cooperate with (which would be the Catholic view) but rather which becomes ours as we perform it. It's got the foundation of imputed righteousness but still doesn't want to get as fully radical as Luther did with respect to the idea that salvation is a judgement of our own action.