Something from ... Luther's "The Bondage of the Will" (Entry #12)

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 revealed only in his word.


            Most people are religious.  Most people believe in some kind of god.  But most people also craft God into their own image, or into their own imagination of what is right and just.

            We believe what we see.  We are convinced of what we feel.  We craft our beliefs according to what we experience.  In worldly matters, this makes sense.  Oranges are sweet; if they aren’t they are bad.  Trustworthy people are honest; if they lie to us, we don’t trust them anymore.  People should be honored for their noble deeds; people should be reprimanded or punished for wicked deeds.  These things make sense to us, and we order our world according to them.

            But in regard to God, things don’t always work as we think they should.  It seems that God rewards some for their wicked deeds and lets them go unpunished.  It seems that God does not care about people who are sick and suffering and dying.  It seems that if God is loving, he would see to it that all go to heaven.  So, what we see, feel, and experience tells us that God is unjust, uncaring, and unloving.

            Faith which trusts what we see, feel, and experience is not faith in God at all.  Faith in God is based on what God tells us.  God reveals who he is, what he desires, and what he does.  Faith trusts in that even when what we see, feel, and experience insists that it cannot be true.  God, however, is not found in our senses; he is found in his word.  That is the only place we can know God.  And while our senses and emotions change constantly, God remains who he is at all times.  That is why faith has a firm foundation and trusts that God is good and merciful even when God seems cruel … or even hateful.

            Something from Luther on letting God be revealed in his word and trusting in that alone.

            “Faith's object is things not seen.  That there may be room for faith, therefore, all that is believed must be hidden.  Yet it is not hidden more deeply than under a contrary appearance of sight, sense and experience.  Thus, when God quickens, He does so by killing; when He justifies, He does so by pronouncing guilty; when He carries up to heaven, He does so by bringing down to hell. … Thus God conceals His eternal mercy and loving kindness beneath unrighteousness.  Now, the highest degree of faith is to believe that He is merciful, though He saves so few and damns so many; to believe that He is just, through of His own will He makes us perforce proper subjects for damnation, and seems (in Erasmus' words) 'to delight in the torments of poor wretches and to be a fitter object for hate than for love.'  If I could by any means understand how this same God, who makes such a show of wrath and unrighteousness, can yet be merciful and just, there would be no need for faith.  But as it is, the impossibility of understanding makes room for the exercise of faith when these things are preached and published; just as, when God kills, faith in life is exercised in death.” (page 101)