Martin Luther & the Bondage of the Will

Recently in our Theology on the Go podcast, Carl Truman was interviewed regarding the great Reformer Martin Luther. Luther is a towering man in church history with well known eccentricities. While I am by no means a church history scholar, I thought I would offer a few introductory thoughts regarding one of Martin Luther’s most notable works The Bondage of the Will in order to commend it to you as a book still worth reading.

Martin Luther’s work De Servo Arbitrio was published in December of 1525. It is a polemical work written in response to Desiderius Erasmus’s work De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio (Of free will: Discourses or Comparisons). Erasmus was a well known humanist who had produced the first published version of the Greek New Testament in 1516. Martin Luther himself used Erasmus’ 1519 second edition of the Greek New Testament in his own German translation of the Bible.

By the time Erasmus wrote his work on Free Will, Luther was becoming a rising star and thorn in the flesh in the Roman Catholic Church. Despite a general distaste for dogmatic theology, Erasmus was persuaded by friends and by the Pope that he should respond to Luther’s doctrines. The result was in effect to ‘poke the bear’ rousing Luther to respond with arguably one of his greatest works.

While Luther’s The Bondage of the Will is situated to a particular controversy in a particular time, it remains a clear articulation of the doctrines of God’s predestination of individuals unto salvation and man’s absolute and complete bondage in depravity. Luther reminds us of the power of God to awaken men. He argues that it is necessary because man cannot and will not respond. Luther also makes that case that it is of practical necessity to understand these doctrines because it leads us to greater worship.

Here are several reasons I believe you will benefit from reading Luther’s work:

(1)  In reading Luther’s Bondage of the Will, you get a taste of Luther’s rhetoric at its best. Luther is well known for his fiery personality. This leads to great weaknesses in the man but is also at times a great strength. One of my favorite lines in Luther’s work is when he is commenting on passages where God is angry, pitying, or repenting to which he remarks “figures of speech which even schoolboys know about.” Or when he argues that preaching “Christ crucified brings all these doctrines with Him” adding the quip “Do you, I wonder, take preaching Christ crucified to be just a matter of calling out ‘Christ was crucified,’ and nothing more?”

(2)  The doctrines that Luther covers in this work are issues of contention today. Spend any amount of time around Christians and you will encounter people today who still struggle over the doctrines of free will and predestination. Some of these struggles are genuine wrestlings to submit to God and His Word. Other times, one will encounter a pomposity in defending human choice in coming to God. Luther’s work cuts this down to size and exposes it for what it is: rebellion against God and a refusal to submit to God. But he relies on God’s Word to do this.

(3)  His exegesis of Biblical texts his still relevant. Sometimes when you read works of church history, you will find that our forefathers used verses out of context or spiritualized their exegesis of particular passages. At times you find a great figure in church history arguing for the right doctrine from the wrong text or in a way that handles the text less than accurately. This is not to say those of the modern age have a monopoly on proper exegesis but simply to acknowledge human failures. By and large, when you look at the texts that Luther addresses in his arguments they are the same ones you would find yourself using if you were going to defend his doctrines today. Luther gives you a sense of what Scripture says and the real force of his argument is the Scriptures themselves which he ably handles.

(4)  Luther’s passion for God shines through. Luther cannot tolerate human wisdom and human reasoning that is devoid of the cross. Numerous times in his work, he shows how reliance on the human reasoning of the humanist and Sophist traditions brings one into direct contradiction to what the Bible says. Luther wants to see human pride and loftiness cut down before the greatness of God so that God and His free will are exalted and man is placed into a proper relationship under God. From Luther you get a sense of what the implications for being gospel-centered really are: it brings with it other doctrines that exalt God to His fullness.

I first read Luther’s work before I went into pastoral ministry. One of the quotes that stuck with me since my reading of his work was how Luther pressed upon us the necessity of these doctrines. We, too, live in a day and age where many have a weak stomach for doctrinal precision or disputation. We are told doctrines do not matter, only Jesus. Sometimes doctrines of God’s sovereignty are seen as meaningless quibbling. Luther reminds us how profoundly these issues matter for spiritual growth and maturity:

“I would also point out, not only how true these things are (I shall discuss that more fully from Scripture on a later page), but also how godly, reverent and necessary it is to know them. For where they are not known, there can be no faith, nor any worship of God. To lack this knowledge is really to be ignorant of God—and salvation is notoriously incompatible with such ignorance. For it you hesitate to believe, or are too proud to acknowledge, that God foreknows and wills all things, not contingently, but necessarily and immutably, how can you believe, trust and rely on His promises? When He makes promises, you ought to be out of doubt that He knows, and can and will perform, what He promises; otherwise, you will be accounting Him neither true nor faithful, which is unbelief, and the height of irreverence, and a denial of the most high God!”

…

“If, then, we are taught and believe that we ought to be ignorant of the necessary foreknowledge of God and the necessity of events, Christian faith is utterly destroyed, and the promises of God and the whole gospel fall to the ground completely; for the Christian’s chief and only comfort in every adversity lies in knowing that God does not lie, but brings all things to pass immutably, and that His will cannot be resisted, altered or impeded.”

Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1957, 1998) 83-84. 

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