Something from ... Luther's "The Bondage of the Will" (Entry #13)

INTRODUCTORY NOTES:  During the life of Martin Luther, Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus, was urged by Roman Catholic Church leaders to challenge Luther’s teachings and to condemn him.  Although Erasmus would rather have kept the peace in the Church, Erasmus was finally goaded into attacking Luther.  Erasmus intended to defend the official Roman Catholic teaching that God’s grace was needed to do the works by which man could then merit additional grace.  Luther’s response to Erasmus is known as The Bondage of the Will (De Servo Arbitrio).  Although Luther had published a myriad of writings in his career, he did not consider them worth preserving.  Luther regarded The Bondage of the Will as a rare exception to that rule.  In it, Luther writes at length that “free will” in spiritual matters is a lie, and that, if man actually has free will, then God loses such attributes as grace, omnipotence, and even his right to be God.

            The quotations from Luther in this blog post come from The Bondage of the Will translated by J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston, Baker Academic: Grand Rapids, MI. © 1957.

            The following are thoughts concerning Luther’s arguments, urging us to LET GOD BE GOD.  Something from Luther’s The Bondage of the Will.

LET GOD BE GOD: Let God be gracious.


            Why do people do bad things?  Because they are sinners.  We are not sinners because we sin.  We sin because we are sinners.  When we commit sins, we are only acting according to our nature.  Although God acts through us (he has to, or we would not remain alive), God does not commit the sin.  God acts in us and we move according to our sinful condition.  The fault lies not with God, but with sinful mankind.  This is what Luther refers to as “necessity” or “immutability.”  God does not compel us to sin; we do it on our own.

            If this sinful condition and the resultant sinful actions are to change, then God must be the one at work to make the change.  We do not have the free will to change ourselves.  We are, by nature, hostile to God.  That is our nature.  And since we are naturally opposed to God, his word, and his will, we cannot automatically change our will into what it is not.  This is God’s work upon us and in us.  Only when God changes our nature and will are we agreeable to God, his word, and his will. 

God’s grace is what changes us.  If we harden ourselves in rebellion and resist God’s grace, then we chafe all the more under what God has decreed to be good.  Although we may appear to do good, our nature does not do it out of “necessity” but under “compulsion.”  If we desire to do what is good and strive to carry it out, it is only because God has graciously worked in us to change our nature and our will.  Let God be gracious and credit him for the good that we do.  Here is something from Luther on works done “of necessity” by sinners who are incapable of changing their own nature.

            “I said 'of necessity'; I did not say 'of compulsion'; I meant, by a necessity, not of compulsion, but of what they call immutability.  That is to say: a man without the Spirit of God does not do evil against his will, under pressure, as though he were taken by the scruff of the neck and dragged into it, like a thief or footpad being dragged off against his will to punishment; but he does it spontaneously and voluntarily.  And this willingness or volition is something which he cannot in his own strength eliminate, restrain or alter.  He goes on willing and desiring to do evil; and if external pressure forces him to act otherwise, nevertheless his will within remains averse to so doing and chafes under such constraint and opposition.  But it would not thus chafe were it being changed, and were it yielding to constraint willingly.  This is what we mean by necessity of immutability: that the will cannot change itself, nor give itself another bent but, rather, is the more provoked to crave the more it is opposed, as its chafing proves; for this would not occur, were it free or had 'free-will.'” (pages 102-103)