This article explores how sin and trust as fundamental notions of Luther’s relational anthropology determine his understanding of social relations unfolding in the hierarchies of the earthly realm. Against scholastic works righteousness, Luther maintains that humans are absolute sinners incapable of justifying themselves through good works and receive faith as a gift of unconditional trust in God. This reformulation of the human relation to God has profound consequences for Luther’s understanding of interpersonal relations. Luther understands the justifying relation to God as a precondition for fruitful and trusting social relations in a world infused by sin. Moreover, Luther patterns his understanding of the hierarchic relations between subjects and their earthly authorities on the trusting relation between God and human beings. However, because of sin individuals need to subject themselves to superiors. In this way, Luther’s understanding of the human being as both righteous and sinful seems to be the reason behind the apparent paradox of hierarchy and equality permeating his conception of society.

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Scandinavians place more trust in each other, public authorities, and state institutions than anyone else in the world. In recent years, the high levels of social and institutional trust among Scandinavians have attracted great international awareness since trust-based communities have high degrees of social coherence, stronger economies and happier citizens. Scholars have shown how trust and mutual obligation are central elements in the formation of

In recent years, the high level of trust among Scandinavians in general and Danes in particular has attracted considerable international interest. The article unearths the rooting of Danish trust culture in Lutheran soil arguing for the influence of Lutheran theology and social teaching on Danish society from the Reformation onwards as a key to understanding its historical background. It identifies central social imaginaries of trust in Luther's work and trace their impact on eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century Danish Lutheran confessional culture by analyzing texts written by the influential theologians Erik Pontoppidan (1698–1764) and Niels Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872).