Introduction

• Erasmus’ definition of Free Choice: “By free choice in this place we mean a power of the human will by which a man can apply himself to the things which lead to eternal salvation, or turn away from them.” AE 33:102-103. [Diatribe, EAS 4, 36]
• Luther’s response: “You might perhaps rightly attribute some measure of choice to man, but to attribute free choice to him in relation to divine things is too much; for the term ‘free choice,’ in the judgment of everyone’s ears, means (strictly speaking) that which can do and does, in relation to God, what it pleases, uninhibited by any law or any sovereign authority.” AE 33:103.
• Erasmus identifies three opinions on free choice, and trying to avoid Pelagianism, he approves of the first opinion, which denies man’s ability to do good without special grace, but tries to reject the latter two as too extreme. Luther points out that all three opinions are the same.
  • “Out of one opinion of free choice you make three. You regard as hard, though probable enough, the opinion of those who deny that man can will the good without special grace. They deny that he can begin, progress, or reach his goal, etc., and this you approve because it leaves man to desire and endeavor, but does not leave him with anything to ascribe to his own powers. Harder, you think, is the opinion of those who contend that free choice is of no avail save to sin, that grace alone accomplishes good in us, etc. But hardest is the view of those who say that free choice is a mere empty name, that it is God who works both good and evil in us, and that all things which happen come about by sheer necessity. It is against these last two positions that you profess to be writing. Do you really know what you are saying, my dear Erasmus? You express here three opinions as if they belong to three different schools, not realizing that they are the same thing variously stated in different words at different times, by us who remain the same persons and exponents of one school only; but let us draw your attention to this and point out the carelessness or stupidity of your judgment.” AE 33:112.
  • “You grant that man cannot will good without special grace—for we are not now discussing what the grace of God can do, but what man can do without grace. You grant, then, that free choice cannot will good. This means nothing else but that it cannot apply itself to the things which pertain to eternal salvation, as your definition cheerfully stated it could.” AE 33:113.
  • Erasmus tries to take the middle road, but Luther points out that he is saying Yes and No at the same time.
    • “The first opinion, then, when compared with itself, is such as to deny that man can will anything good, and yet to maintain that a desire is left to him which nevertheless is not his own. Now, let us compare it with the other two. The second is that harder one which holds that free choice avails for nothing but sinning. This is Augustine’s view, which he expresses in many places, but particularly in his book On the Spirit and the Letter … The third and hardest opinion is that of Wycliffe and Luther, that free choice is an empty name and all that we do comes about by sheer necessity. It is with these two views that Diatribe quarrels. … I meant to say nothing else, and to have nothing else understood, by the words of the last two opinions than what is stated in the first opinion. I neither think that Augustine meant anything else, nor do I find any other meaning in his words than what the first opinion says, so that the three opinions cited by Diatribe are to me nothing but that one single opinion of my own.” AE 33:115-116.  Diatribe quoted in footnote 31 on AE 33:117.

Influence on the Lutheran Confessions

Small Catechism

• The Third Article: Sanctification

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

What does this mean? I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers. On the Last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ.

This is most certainly true.

Augsburg Confession and Apology of the Augsburg Confession

• Article XVIII: Free Will
  • Our churches teach that a person’s will has some freedom to choose civil righteousness and to do things subject to reason. It has no power, without the Holy Spirit, to work the righteousness of God, that is, spiritual righteousness. For “the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:14) (pgh 1-2)
  • This is what Augustine says in his hypognosticon, Book III:
    “We grant that all people have a free will. It is free as far as it has the judgment of reason. This does not mean that it is able, without God, either to begin, or at least to complete, anything that has to do with God.” (pgh 4)
  • Although nature is able in a certain way to do the outward work (for it is able to keep the hands from theft and murder), yet it cannot produce the inward motions, such as the fear of God, trust in God, chastity, patience, and so on. (pgh 9)
• Apology: XVIII Free Will
  • The adversaries accept Article XVIII, “Free Will,” Although they add some references having nothing to do with this case. … “Very well, but what difference is there between the Pelagians and our adversaries, since both hold that people can love God and perform His commandments with respect to the substance of the acts and can merit grace and justification by works that reason performs by itself without the Holy Spirit? (pgh. 68)
  • Although we admit that free will has the freedom and power to perform the extreme works of the law, we do not assign spiritual matters to free will. These are to truly fear God, believe God, be confident and hold that He cares for us, hears us, and forgives us. (pgh. 73)
• Article XIX: The Cause of Sin
  • Our churches teach that although God creates and preserves nature, the cause of sin is located in the will of the wicked, that is, the devil and ungodly people. Without God’s help, this will turns itself away from God, as Christ says, “When he lies, he speaks out of his own character” (John 8:44)

Formula of Concord

• Article II: Epitome
  • The will of mankind is found in four different states: (1) before the fall; (2) since the fall; (3) after regeneration; and (4) after the resurrection of the body. The chief question in this article is only about the will and ability of mankind in the second state.
  • In spiritual matters the understanding and reason of mankind are completely blind and by their own powers understand nothing, as is written in 1 Corinthians 2:14…
  • The unregenerate will of mankind is not only turned away from God, but also has become God’s enemy. So it only has an inclination and desire for that which is evil and contrary to God, as it is written in Genesis 8:21, the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”  Romans 8:7 says, “The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law, indeed, it cannot.”
  • With these brief words (after sighting Psalm 95:8; Acts 16:14; 1 Corinthians 3:5-7; and John 15:5) the Spirit denies free will its powers and ascribes everything to God’s grace, in order that no one may boast before God (1 Cor. 1:29; [2 Corinthians 12:5; Jer. 9:23]).
  • We reject and condemn all the following errors as contrary to the standard of God’s Word: 1. The insane ideas of the philosophers who are called Stoics. We reject also the ideas of the Manichaens, who taught that everything that happens must so happen and cannot happen otherwise; everything that a person does, even in outward things, he does by compulsion: he is forced to do evil works and deeds, such as unchastity, robbery, murder, theft, and the like.
  • We also reject the error of the Pelagians. They taught that a person by his own powers, without the Holy Spirit’s grace, can turn himself to God, believe the Gospel, be obedient from the heart to God’s Law, and so merit the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.”
  • We also reject… the semi-Pelagians. They teach that a person by his own powers can begin his conversion, but cannot complete it without the Holy Spirit’s grace.
  • Augustine has written that a person’s will in his conversion is purely passive, that is, that it does nothing at all.
  • There are two efficient causes for a person’s conversion: (1) the Holy Spirit and (2) God’s Word, as the instrument of the Holy Spirit…
• Article II: Solid Declaration
  • Paragraph 7: In spiritual and divine things the unregenerate person’s intellect, heart, and will are utterly unable, by his natural powers to understand, believe, accept, think, will, begin, effect, do, work, or concur in working anything. They are entirely dead to what is good [Ephesians 2:5]. They are corrupt. So in mankind’s nature since the fall, before regeneration, there is not the least spark of spiritual power remaining or present. No person can prepare himself for God’s grace or accept the grace God offers.
  • Paragraph 18: (a) the free will, from its own natural powers, cannot work or agree to work anything for its own conversion, righteousness, and salvation, nor follow, believe, or agree with the Holy Spirit, who through the Gospel offers a person grace and salvation; (b) from its inborn, wicked, rebellious nature it resists God and His will with hostility, unless it is enlightened and controlled by God’s Spirit.
  • Paragraph 26: chock-full of Bible Passages refuting freedom of the will in spiritual matters.
  • Solid Declaration cites the Smalcald Articles (Sin [III I 5]) on paragraph 33 and the Large Catechism  [II:52-53] on paragraph 36-37 to prove bondage of the will. And the Small Catechism on paragraph 40.
  • Paragraph 44: Dr. Luther also wrote this way in his book The Bondage of the Will [1525], in opposition to Erasmus. Luther clarified and supported this position well and thoroughly. Afterward he repeated and explained it in his glorious commentary on the Book of Genesis, especially Genesis 26. Luther’s meaning and understanding (about some other peculiar disputed points introduced here and there by Erasmus, as of absolute necessity, and such) have been firmly stated by him in the best and most careful way against all misunderstanding and perversion. We also appeal to this book and refer others to it.
  • Negative Statements: 1. First, the folly of the Stoics and Manichaeans, who asserted that everything that happens must happen in this way, that a person does everything from coercion. And even in outward works a person’s will has no freedom or ability to perform (to a certain extent) outward righteousness and respectable behavior. A person cannot avoid outward sins and vices. A person’s will is coerced to do outward wicked deeds, unchastity, robbery, murder, and such.
  • Paragraph 89: Luther says about conversion that a person is purely passive (Bondage of the Will, AE 33:157).
  •  
• SD XI. God’s Eternal Foreknowledge and Election
  • First, the distinction between God’s eternal foreknowledge and the eternal election of His children to eternal salvation is to be made carefully.
    • Luther does not make this distinction in the Bondage of the Will.
      • “Diatribe… is at length compelled by force of truth to admit our view when she says: ‘For God to will and foreknow are the same thing. And this is what Paul means by “Who can resist his will if he has mercy on whom he wills and hardens whom he wills?” … Thus the will of God, since it is the principal cause of all things that take place, seems to impose necessity on our will.’ So says she; and we can at last thank God for some sound sense in Diatribe.” AE 186.

Principles of Biblical Interpretation

Sola Scriptura

• Do not use the Church Fathers to explain away clear passages of Scripture
• Luther distinguishes between “internal clarity of Scripture,” which every Christian possesses to interpret Scripture, “1 Corinthians 2:15: ‘The spiritual man judges all things, but himself is judged by no one.’ This belongs to faith and is necessary for every individual Christian. … But this judgment helps no one else…”, and “external clarity of Holy Scripture: “There is therefore another, an external judgment, whereby with the greatest certainty we judge the spirits and dogmas of men, not only for ourselves, but also for others and for their salvation. This judgment belongs to the public ministry of the Word and to the outward office… This is what we earlier called ‘the external clarity of Holy Scripture.’ Thus we say that all spirits are to be tested in the presence of the Church at the bar of Scripture.” AE 33:90-91
  • So, while Luther acknowledges that each individual Christian has the internal spirit of clarity regarding Scripture through faith, he states that it is the public ministry, which judges doctrine according to Scripture (the analogy of the faith). He rebukes both pope and individual fanatic for twisting Scripture to a private interpretation: “For I have had this year and am still having, a sharp enough fight with those fanatics who subject the Scriptures to the interpretation of their own spirit.” AE 33:90.
• “Yet all I have said might have been summed up in this short alternative: Your Preface is complaining either about the words of God or the words of men. If it is about the words of men, it has been written wholly in vain and is no concern of ours. If it is about the words of God, it is wholly impious. It would therefore have been more useful to have a statement as to whether they were God’s words or men’s about which we are disputing.” AE 33:70
• Pg. 71 middle paragraph

Scripture is Clear

• After citing 2 Corinthians 3 and 4, 2 Peter 1:19; John 8:12; 9:5; 5:35, 39; Philippians 2:16; Acts 17:11, Luther exclaims, “Do not all these things prove that the apostles, like Christ Himself, point us to the Scriptures as the very clearest witnesses to what they themselves say?”
• “If the dogma of free choice is obscure or ambiguous, it does not belong to Christians or the Scriptures, and it should be abandoned and reckoned among those fables which Paul condemns Christians for wrangling about. If, however, it does belong to Christians and the Scriptures, it ought to be clear, open, and evident, exactly like all the other clear and evident articles of faith.” AE 33:95
• “If, then, Scripture is crystal clear, you say, why have men of outstanding talent in so many centuries been blind in this regard? I reply that they have been thus blind for the praise and glory of free choice. … find the answer in this passage of Scripture, namely, that man left to himself sees but does not perceive and hears but does not understand.” AE 33:98.
• “It may suffice for a beginning to have laid down that the Scriptures are perfectly clear, and that by them such a defense of our position may be made that our adversaries will not be able to gainsay it. What cannot be defended in this way is no concern of ours and is no business of Christians. But if there are any who do not perceive this clarity, and are blind or blunder in this sunlight, then they only show—if they are ungodly—how great is the majesty and power of Satan over the sons of men, to make them neither hear nor take in the very clearest words of God.” AE 33:99.

Subjunctive and Imperative cases cannot be used to prove Free Will. Indicative case proves bondage of the will.

• Ecclesiasticus 15:14-17: ‘“If thou wilt observe the commandments, they shall preserve thee,’ etc. It is therefore at this point, ‘If thou wilt,’ that the question of free choice arises. We thus learn from Ecclesiasticus that man is divided between two kingdoms, in one of them he is directed by his own choice and counsel, apart from any precepts and commandments of God, namely, in his dealing with the lower creatures. Here he reigns and is lord, as having been left in the hand of his own counsel. Not that God so leaves him as not to cooperate with him in everything, but he has granted him the free use of things according to his own choice, and has not restricted him by any laws or injunctions. … In the other kingdom, however, man is not left in the hand of his own counsel, but is directed and led by the choice and counsel of God, so that just as in his own kingdom he is directed by his own counsel, without regard to the precepts of another, so in the Kingdom of God he is directed by the precepts of another without regard to his own choice. … which is not absurd but entirely sound and in harmony with the whole tenor of Scripture, whereas theirs is at variance with Scripture as a whole and is derived from this one passage alone, in contradiction to it.” AE 33:118-119 (Analogy of Faith; Scripture interprets Scripture)
  • “For the verb is in the subjunctive mood (‘If thou wilt’), which asserts nothing. As the logicians say, a conditional asserts nothing indicatively: for example, ‘If the devil is God, it is right to worship him; if an ass flies, an ass has wings; if free choice exists, grace is nothing.’ Ecclesiasticus, however, should have spoken as follows, if he had wished to assert free choice: ‘Man can keep the commandments of God,’ or ‘Man has the power to keep the commandments.’” AE 33:119-120.
  • Notice also how Luther does not reject Ecclesiasticus, though it is in the Apocrypha, but he argues with it as deuterocanonical.
  • “For she can quote nothing but imperative and subjunctive or optative expressions, which signify, not what we do or can do … but what we ought to do and what is demanded of us, in order that we may be aware of our impotence and brought to the knowledge of sin.” AE 33:144.
  • “It would then be true, both that we can do nothing of the things commanded, and that at the same time we can do them all; the former being attributed to our own powers, the latter to the grace of God.” AE 33:149.

Law and Gospel

• “The words of law are spoken, therefore, not to affirm the power of the will, but to enlighten blind reason and make it see that its own light is not light and that the virtue of the will is no virtue. ‘Through the law,’ says Paul, ‘comes knowledge of sin’ [Rom. 3:20]; he does not say the abolition or avoidance of sin. … By the words of the law man is warned and instructed as to what he ought to do, not what he is able to do; there purpose is that he may know his sin, not that he may believe himself to have any power. Accordingly, my dear Erasmus, as often as you quote the words of the law against me, I shall quote Paul’s statement against you, that through the law comes knowledge of sin, not virtue in the will. … even grammarians and street urchins know, that by verbs of the imperative mood nothing else is signified but what ought to be done. What is done, or can be done, must be expressed by indicative verbs.” AE 33:127.
  • “The commandments are not, however, either inappropriate or purposeless, but are given in order that blind, self-confident man may through them come to know his own diseased state of impotence if he attempts to do what is commanded.” AE 33:128.
• But our Diatribe, again making no distinction between words of law and of promise, takes this verse of Ezekiel [18:23, 32] as an expression of the law, and expounds it thus: ‘I desire not the death of a sinner,’ that is, ‘I do not want him to sin mortally or become a sinner liable to death, but rather that he may turn from his sin, if he has committed any, and so live.’ … But this means completely throwing overboard the loveliest thing in Ezekiel, ‘I desire not death.’ … For he does not say, ‘I desire not the sin of a man, ‘ but, ‘I desire no the death of a sinner,’ plainly showing that he is speaking of the penalty of sin, which the sinner experiences for his sin, namely, the fear of death.” AE 33:137.
• “But in the words ‘Love God with all your heart,’ we are shown the good we ought to do, not the evil we feel, in order that we may recognize how unable we are to do that good. … But God’s solicitude in promising grace to recall and restore the sinner is a sufficiently strong and reliable argument that free choice by itself cannot but go from bad to worse and (as Scripture says) fall down into hell, unless you credit God with such levity as to pour out words of promise in profusion for the mere pleasure of talking, and not because they are in any way necessary for our salvation. So you can see that not only all the words of the law stand against free choice, but also all the words of promise utterly refute it; which means that Scripture in its entirety stands opposed to it.” AE 33:138.
• “We, however, are discussing free choice precisely as it is without grace, and arguing that by laws and threatenings, or the Old Testament, it is brought to knowledge of itself, so that it may run to the promises set forth in the New Testament.” AE 33:151
• “Diatribe so often repeats throughout her book: ‘If we cannot do anything, what is the point of so many laws, so many precepts, so many threatenings and promises?’ Paul here replies: Through the law comes knowledge of sin.” AE 33:261.
• “There is need of another light to reveal the remedy. This is the voice of the gospel, revealing Christ as the deliverer from all these things. It is not reason or free choice that reveals Christ; how should it when it is itself darkness and needs the light of the law to reveal its disease, which by its own light it does not see, but believes to be health? AE 33:262.
• “When sins are unrecognized, there is no room for a remedy and no hope of a cure, because men will not submit to the touch of a healer when they imagine themselves well and in no need of a physician… when its gravity and magnitude are recognized, man in his pride who imagines himself well may be humbled and may sigh and gasp for the grace that is offered in Christ.” AE 262.

Do not use tropes to explain away passages difficult to accept.

• “Let us rather take the view that neither an inference nor a trope is admissible in any passage of Scripture, unless it is forced on us by the evident nature of the context and the absurdity of the literal sense as conflicting with one or another of the articles of faith.” AE 33:162.
• “What happened to the Arians in that trope by which they made Christ into a merely nominal God? What has happened in our own time to these new prophets regarding the words of Christ, ‘This is my body,’ where one finds a trope in the pronoun ‘this,’ another in the verb ‘is,’ another in the noun ‘body’?” AE 33:163.
• “What I have observed is this, that all heresies and errors in connection with the Scriptures have arisen, not from the simplicity of the words, as is almost universally stated, but from neglect of the simplicity of the words, and from tropes and inferences hatched out of men’s own heads.” AE 33:163.

The Hidden and Awful Will of God

• “Those, however, who have not yet experienced the office of the law, and neither recognize sin nor feel death, have no use for the mercy promised by that word. But why some are touched by the law and others are not, so that the former accept and the latter despise the offered grace, is another question and one not dealt with by Ezekiel in this passage. For he is speaking of the preached and offered mercy of God, not of that hidden and awful will of God whereby he ordains by his own counsel which and what sort of persons he wills to be recipients and partakers of his preached and offered mercy. This will is not to be inquired into, but reverently adored, as by far the most awe-inspiring secret of the Divine majesty, reserved for himself alone and forbidden to us much more religiously than any number of Corycian caverns.” AE 33:139.
• “God must therefore be left to himself in his own majesty, for in this regard we have nothing to do with him, nor has he willed that we should have anything to do with him. But we have something to do with him insofar as he is clothed and set forth in his Word, through which he offers himself to us and which is the beauty and glory with which the psalmist celebrates him as being clothed.”  AE 33:139.
• “For it is this that God as he is preached is concerned with, namely, that sin and death should be taken away and we should be saved… But God hidden in his majesty neither deplores nor takes away death, but works life, death, and all in all. … Diatribe, however, deceives herself in her ignorance by not making any distinction between God preached and God hidden, that is, between the Word of God and God himself. … Thus he does not will the death of a sinner, according to his word; but he wills it according to that inscrutable will of his. It is our business however, to pay attention to the word and leave that inscrutable will alone.” AE 33:140.
• After citing 1 Tim. 2:4 and Matthew 23:37, Luther writes, “But why that majesty of his does not remove or change this defect of our will in all men, since it is not in man’s power to do so, or why he imputes this defect to man, when man cannot help having it, we have no right to inquire; and though you may do a lot of inquiring, you will never find out. It is as Paul says in Romans 9:20: ‘Who are you, to answer back to God?’” AE 33:140.

Necessity and Compulsion

• “Here, then, is something fundamentally necessary and salutary for a Christian, to know that God foreknows nothing contingently, but that he foresees and purposes and does all things by his immutable, eternal, and infallible will. Here is a thunderbolt by which free choice is completely prostrated and shattered, so that those who want free choice asserted must either deny or explain away this thunderbolt, or get rid of it by other means. … If, then, the assertion of these things concerning God is, as you state, religious, pious, and salutary, what has come over you that you now contradict yourself by asserting that it is irreverent, inquisitive, and vain to say that God foreknows necessarily? You declare that the will of God is to be understood as immutable, yet you forbid us to know that his foreknowledge is immutable. Do you, then, believe that he foreknows without willing or wills without knowing? If he foreknows as he wills, then his will is eternal and unchanging (because his nature is so), and if he wills as he foreknows, then his knowledge is eternal and unchanging (because his nature is so). From this it follows irrefutably that everything we do, everything that happens, even if it seems to us to happen mutably and contingently [in such a way that it could have been otherwise], happens in fact nonetheless necessarily and immutably, if you have regard to the will of God. For the will of God is effectual and cannot be hindered, since it is the power of the divine nature itself…” AE 33:37-38.
• “I could wish indeed that another and better word had been introduced into our discussion than this usual one, ‘necessity,’ which is not rightly applied either to the divine or the human will. It has too harsh and incongruous a meaning for this purpose, for it suggests a kind of compulsion, and the very opposite of willingness, although the subject under discussion implies no such thing. For neither the divine nor the human will does what it does, whether good or evil, under any compulsion, but from sheer pleasure or desire, as with true freedom; and yet the will of God is immutable and infallible, and it governs our mutable will, as Boethius says: ‘Remaining fixed, Thou makest all things move’; and our will, especially when it is evil, cannot of itself do good. The reader’s intelligence must therefore supply what the word ‘necessity’ does not express, by understanding it to mean what you might call the immutability of the will of God and the impotence of our evil will, or what some have called the necessity of immutability, though this is not very good either grammatically or theologically.” AE 33:39 (later edition to Luther’s Work)
• “But if we are unwilling to let this term go altogether—though that would be the safest and most God-fearing thing to do –let us at least teach men to use it honestly, so that free choice is allowed to man only with respect to what is beneath him and not what is above him. That is to say, a man should know that with regard to his faculties and possessions he has the right to us, to do, or to leave undone, according to his own free choice, though even this is controlled by the free choice of God alone, who acts in whatever way he pleases. On the other hand, in relation to God, or in matters pertaining to salvation or damnation, a man has no free choice, but is a captive, subject and slave either of the will of God or the will of Satan.” AE 33:70.
• In fact it is God alone who by his Spirit works in us both merit and reward, though he discloses and proclaims them both to the whole world by his external Word, in order that his power and glory and our impotence and ignominy may be proclaimed even among the ungodly and unbelieving and ignorant, although only the godly perceive this in their heart and hold on to it in faith, while the rest despise it.”
• “Christians, however, are not led by free choice but by the Spirit of God, according to Romans 8:14; and to be led is not to lead, but to be carried along as a saw or an ax is wielded by a carpenter. And here, lest anyone should doubt whether Luther ever said anything so absurd, Diatribe quotes my own words, which I frankly acknowledge. For I take the view that Wycliffe’s article (that ‘all things happen by necessity’) was wrongly condemned by the Council…” AE 33:160.
  • Diatribe quotes Luther, which Luther acknowledges as his own words, the following, “So, it is necessary to retract this article. For I was wrong in saying that free choice before grace is a reality only in name. I should have said simply: free choice is in reality a fiction, or a name without reality. For no one has it in his own power to think a good or bad thought, but everything (as Wycliffe’s article condemned at Constance rightly teaches) happens by absolute necessity.” AE 33:160 n. 86.
• “But if God foreknew that Judas would be a traitor, Judas necessarily became a traitor, and it was not in the power of Judas or any creature to do differently or to change his will, though he did what he did willingly and not under compulsion, but that act of will was a work of God, which he set in motion by his omnipotence, like everything else.” AE 33:185.
• “Why does He still find fault? Who can resist his will? Where is the God who is by nature most merciful? …. And such like complaints, which will be howled out by the damned in hell forever.” AE 33:189.

Motives for Defending Free Will

Defending God against Accusations of Injustice

• If man is incapable of choosing God or reforming himself or doing any good, then the charge is that God is unjust for condemning him for not doing what he by nature cannot do.

Defending Man

• Human reason does not want to say that the outward righteousness of man is displeasing to God apart from faith in Christ. This offends man that Scripture says that good works done apart from the Spirit are not good.
• “Now, if you are disturbed by the thought that it is difficult to defend the mercy and justice of God when he damns the undeserving, that is to say, ungodly men who are what they are because they were born in ungodliness and can in no way help being and remaining ungodly and damnable, but are compelled by a necessity of nature to sin and to perish (as Paul says: ‘We were all children of wrath like the rest,’ since they are created so by God himself from seed corrupted by the sin of the one man Adam)—rather must God be honored and revered as supremely merciful toward those whom he justifies and saves, supremely unworthy as they are, and there must be at least some acknowledgment of his divine wisdom so that he may be believed to be righteous where he seems to us to be unjust. For if his righteousness were such that it could be judged to be righteous by human standards, it would clearly not be divine and would in no way differ from human righteousness. … ‘O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!’” AE 33:289-290.
• “Why do we not take a similar line here too, and say, ‘Our judgment is nothing in comparison with the divine judgment’? Ask Reason herself whether she is not convinced and compelled to confess that she is foolish and rash in not allowing the judgment of God to be incomprehensible, when she admits that everything else divine is incomprehensible. In all other matters we grant God his divine majesty, and only in respect of his judgment are we prepared to deny it. We cannot for a while believe that he is righteous, even though he has promised us that when he reveals his glory we shall all both see and feel that he has been and is righteous.” AE 33:290
• Luther insists that Erasmus LET GOD BE GOD!
• “Let us take it that there are three lights—the light of nature, the light of grace, and the light of glory, to us the common and valid distinction. By the light of nature it is an insoluble problem how it can be just that a good man should suffer and a bad man prosper; but this problem is solved by the light of grace. By the light of grace it is an insoluble problem how God can damn one who is unable by any power of his own to do anything but sin and be guilty. Here both the light of nature and the light of grace tell us that it is not the fault of the unhappy man, but of an unjust God; for they cannot judge otherwise of a God who crowns one ungodly man freely and apart from merits, yet damns another who may well be less, or at least not more, ungodly. But the light of glory tells us differentl , and it will show us hereafter that the God whose judgment here is one of incomprehensible righteousness is a God of most perfect and manifest righteousness. In the meantime, we can only believe this, being admonished and confirmed by the example of the light of grace, which performs a similar miracle relation to the light of nature.” AE 33:292.

Romans 9

The Hardening of Pharoah

• “Here stand the Word of God: ‘I will harden Pharaoh’s heart’ [Exodus 4:21]. If you say this should or can be taken to mean, ‘I will permit it to be hardened,’ I agree that it can be so taken, and that this trope is widely used in popular speech, as for instance: ‘I will spoil you, because I did not immediately correct you when you did wrong.’ But this is not the place for that kind of proof. The question is not whether that trope is in use, nor yet whether it is possible for anyone to make use of it in this passage of Paul, but the question is whether it is safe to use it and certain that it is rightly used in this passage, and whether Paul intended it to be used. What is in question is not the use of another person, the reader, may make of it, but the use the writer, Paul himself makes of it.” AE 33:164-165.
• Similarly, Paul’s saying, ‘He has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills,’ [Romans 9:18], she plausibly interprets as ‘God hardens when he does not at once punish the sinner, and has mercy as soon as he invites repentance by means of afflictions.’ But what proof is there of this interpretation? Then there is Isaiah’s saying: ‘Thou hast made us err from thy ways, thou hast hardened our heart, so that we fear thee not’ [Isa 63:17]. Granted that Jerome, following Origen, interprets it thus: ‘He is said to lead astray when he does not at once recall from error,’ but who can assure us that Jerome and Origen interpret it correctly? In any case, we have an agreement that we are willing to fight each other, not by appealing to the authority of any doctor, but by that of Scripture alone.” AE 33:166-167
• “So that when God says ‘I will harden Pharoah’s heart,’ you change the person and take it to mean ‘Pharaoh hardens himself through my forbearance.’ ‘God hardens our hearts’ means that we harden ourselves when God delays our punishment. ‘Thou, Lord, hast made us err’ means ‘We have made  ourselves err because thou hast not punished us.’ So God’s being merciful no longer means that he gives grace or shows compassion, remits sin, justifies, or delivers from evil, but on the contrary, it means that he inflicts evil and punishes!” AE 33:167. Here we see that Luther’s aim is to defend God’s grace.
• “We do not divide free choice into two different types, one of them like mud, the other like was, or one like cultivated, the other like uncultivated, land; but we speak of the one type that is equally impotent in all men and is nothing but mud, nothing but uncultivated land, seeing that it cannot will good. Therefore, just as the mud always gets harder and the uncultivated land thornier, so free choice always gets worse both under the hardening forbearance of the sun and the softening downpour of rain. If then, free choice can be defined in only one way and is marked by the same impotence in all men, no reason can be given why it attains to grace in one   instance and not in another if nothing else is preached by the forbearance of a longsuffering God and the chastisement of a merciful God. ….  But if God is robbed of the power and wisdom to elect, what will he be but the false idol, chance, at whose nod everything happens at random? … For just as she herself snores away and despises divine realities, so she judges also about God, as if he snored away and exercised no wisdom, will, or present power in electing, discerning, and inspiring, but handed over to men the busy and burdensome task of accepting or rejecting his forbearance and wrath. That is what we come to when we seek to measure God by human reason and make excuses for him, not reverencing the secrets of his majesty but insisting on prying into them. … Thus it comes about that when we do not let God’s will alone maybe the will and power to harden and to show mercy and to do everything, we attribute to free choice itself the ability to do everything without grace, despite our having denied that it can do anything good without grace” AE 33:171-172.
• Erasmus objects that God made everything very good (Genesis 1:31), so He cannot make Pharoah do anything wrong. Luther answers,
  • “But it soon follows, in the third chapter [Gen.], how man became evil when he was deserted by God and left to himself. From this man, thus corrupted, all are born ungodly, including Pharaoh, as Paul says: ‘We were by nature children of wrath like the rest’ [Eph. 2:3]. God therefore did create Pharaoh ungodly, that is, out of an ungodly and corrupt seed, as it says in The Proverbs of Solomon: ‘The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the ungodly for the day of trouble’ [Prov. 16:4]. … For although God does not make sin, yet he does not cease to fashion and multiply the nature that has been vitiated by sin through the withdrawal of the Spirit, as a wood-carver might make statures out of rotten wood.”  AE 33:174-175. See Augsburg Confession XIX, “The Cause of Sin”
  • “To begin with, even Reason and Diatribe admit that God works all in all [1 Cor. 12:6] and that without him nothing is effected or effective; for he is omnipotent, and this belongs to his omnipotence, as Paul says to the Ephesians. Now, Satan and man, having fallen from God and been deserted by God, cannot will good, that is, things which please God or which God wills; but instead they are continually turned in the direction of their own desires, so that they are unable not to seek the things of self. This will and nature of theirs, therefore, which is thus averse from God, is not something nonexistent. … That remnant nature, therefore, as we call it, in the ungodly man and Satan, as being the creature and work of God, is no less subject to divine omnipotence and activity than all other creatures and works of God. Since, then God moves and actuates all in all, he necessarily moves and acts also in Satan and ungodly man. But he acts in them as they are and as he finds them…” AE 33:175-176.
    • This is critical in understanding what Luther means by necessity. The evil cannot move their will without God working in them, but because of the fall, man’s nature is evil. So, God works evil by moving an evil will. It is necessary that an evil will do evil, unless God change it.
  • “It thus comes about that man perpetually and necessarily sins and errs until he is put right by the Spirit of God.’ AE 33:177.
  • “So it was when God proposed to wrest ungodly Pharaoh’s tyranny from him; He provoked him and increased the hardness and stubbornness of his heart by thrusting at him through the word of Moses, who threatened to take away his kingdom and withdraw the people from his tyranny, without giving him the Spirit inwardly but permitting his ungodly corrupt nature under the rule of Satan to catch fire, flare up, rage, and run riot with a kind of contemptuous self confidence.” AE 33:177-178
  • “Let no one suppose, therefore, when God is said to harden or to work evil in us (for to harden is to make evil), that he does so by creating evil in such from scratch.” AE 33:178.
  • “God works evil in us, i.e., by means of us, not through any fault of his, but owing to our faultiness, since we are by nature evil and he is good; but as he carries us along by his own activity in accordance with the nature of his omnipotence, good as he is himself he cannot help but do evil with an evil instrument, though he makes good use of this evil in accordance with his wisdom for his own glory and our salvation.” AE 33:178.
  • “It is thus that he hardens Pharaoh, when he presents to his ungodly and evil will a word and work which that will hates—owing of course to its inborn defect and natural corruption.” AE 33:179.
  • “Inwardly, I will move his evil will by my general motion so that he may proceed according to his own bent and in his own course of willing, nor will I cease to move it, nor can I do otherwise than move it; but outwardly I will confront him with a word and work with which that evil bent of his will clash, since he cannot do other than will evilly when I move him, evil as he is, by virtue of my omnipotence.” AE 33:180.
  • “It therefore remains for someone to ask why God does not cease from the very motion of omnipotence by which the will of the ungodly is moved to go on being evil and becoming worse. The answer is that this is wanting God to cease to be God on account of the ungodly if you want his power and activity to cease, which implies that he should cease to be good lest they become worse. But why does he not at the same time change the evil wills that he moves? This belongs to the secrets of his majesty, where his judgments are incomprehensible [Rom. 11:33]. It is not our business to ask this question, but to adore these mysteries. AE 33:180.
  • “For at that rate we should be saying that all men are hardened, since there is no one who does not sin, and yet no man could sin unless he were tolerated by divine forbearance. This hardening of Pharaoh, therefore, is something other and more than that general tolerance of divine forbearance.” AE 33:182.

The Choosing of Jacob over Esau

• “[Rom. 9:11f.]. Paul is discussing whether it was by the virtue or merits of free choice that these two attained to what is said of them, and he proves that it was not, but it was solely by the grace of ‘him who calls’ that Jacob attained to what Esau did not. He proves this, however, by invincibly words of Scripture, to the effect that they were not yet born, and had nothing either good or bad [ Rom. 9:11]. And the whole weight of the matter lies in this proof; this is what our dispute is about.” AE 33:197

Potter and Clay

Romans 9:19-21

• “Here they demand that God should act according to human justice, and do what seems right to them, or else cease to be God.”

Erasmus’ Way of Reasoning Does Not Let God be God

• “Therefore, it is absurd that he should damn one who cannot help deserving damnation; and because of this absurdity, it must be false that God has mercy on whomever he wills and hardens whomever he wills. He must be brought to order, and laws must be prescribed for him, so that he may damn none but those who in our judgment have deserved it.” AE 33:206-207
• “For if she had regard to equity, she would expostulate with God just as much when he crowns the unworthy as when he damns the undeserving. She would also praise and extol God just as much when he damns the undeserving as when he saves the unworthy.” AE 33:208.
• “What we have said is that there is no inconsistency in the statements of Scripture, and no need of an interpretation to remove difficulties; but the supporters of free choice look for difficulties where there are none and produce inconsistencies out of their own dreams.” AE 33:210.
• “But Diatribe is so overwhelmed, drowned, and corrupted by the thought of this ungodly idea that it is pointless to command impossibilities, that whenever she hears an imperative or subjunctive verb she cannot help appending her own indicative inferences, to the effect that if something is commanded, then we can do it, and we do it, otherwise the command is stupid.” AE 33:210

Definition of Flesh and Spirit

• “In short, what you will find in the Scriptures is this: Wherever flesh is treated as in opposition to spirit, you can generally take flesh to mean everything that is contrary to the Spirit, as [in John 6:63]: ‘The flesh is of no avail.’ But where flesh is treated on its own, you may take it that it signifies the bodily constitution and nature, as for example: ‘They shall be two in one flesh” [Matt. 19:5]…The Word became flesh” [John 1:14….” AE 33:215
• “You have John: ‘That which is born of flesh is flesh….Christ… divides all men into two classes of flesh and spirit…” AE 33:223
• “The wealth of evidence there is in the Scriptures, that not just one portion, or the most excellent thing, or the governing part of man is flesh, but that the whole man is flesh; and not only that, but the whole people is flesh, and as if that were not enough, the whole human race is flesh. For Christ says: ‘That which is born of flesh is flesh’ [John 3:6]. AE 33:225.
• “So also Holy Scripture, stretching the point, calls man flesh, as if he were carnality itself,  because he savors too much of the things of the flesh and indeed of nothing but these; and it calls him spirit because he savors, seeks, does, and endures nothing but the things of the spirit. … We call ungodly anyone who is without the Spirit of God, for Scripture says it is to justify the ungodly that the Spirit is given. But when Christ distinguishes the Spirit from the flesh by saying: ‘That which is born of flesh is flesh.’ And adds that what is born of the flesh cannot see the Kingdom of God [John 3:6, 3], it plainly follows that whatever is flesh is ungodly and under the wrath of God and a stranger to the Kingdom of God. … since there is no middle kingdom between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan…” AE 33:227.
• “If Christ is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world [John 1:29], then it follows that the whole world is subject to sin, damnation, and the devil, and the distinction between principal and nonprincipal parts is of no use at all.” AE 33:228.

John 15:5, etc. Free Choice is Nothing—Coram Deo

• Erasmus argues that when Jesus says in John 15:5, “I am the Vine, you are the branches. Apart from Me you can do nothing…” that nothing means “only a little” and “an imperfect thing.” Luther responds, “Here I should like to be told how the heretics are to be resisted, who will apply this rule everywhere in the Scriptures, maintaining that ‘nothing’ and ‘not’ are to be taken as signifying ‘imperfection.’ For instance: ‘Without him was not anything made’ [John 1:3], ie., ‘very little’; or ‘The fool says in his heart, “There is no God”’ [Ps. 14:1], i.e., there is an imperfect God; …
• You, who imagine the human will as something standing on neutral ground and left to its own devices, find it easy to imagine also that there can be an endeavor of the will in either direction, because you think of both God and the devil as a long way off, and as if they were only observers of that immutable free will; for you do not believe that they are the movers and inciters of a servile will, and engaged in most bitter conflict with one another. … For either the kingdom of Satan in man  means nothing, and then Christ must be a liar, or else, if his kingdom is as Christ describes it, free choice must be nothing but a captive beast of burden for Satan, which can only be set free if the devil is first cast out by the finger of God [Luke 11:20].
• “the plain fact, which is evidenced by Scriptures… that Satan is by far the most cunning and powerful ruler of this world, … as long as he reigns the human will is not free nor under his own control, but is the slave of sin and Satan, and can only will what its master wills.”

St. Paul: Universal Sinfulness Nullifies Free Choice

• From Paul’s writings, especially Romans 3, St. Paul argues that all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. Luther then asks, “Did none of them strive with all the might of their free choice?” AE 33:249.
• “Free choice is nothing else but the supreme enemy of righteousness and man’s salvation, since there must have been at least a few among the Jews and Gentiles and who toiled and strove to the utmost of the power of free choice, yet just by doing so they did nothing but wage war against grace.” AE 33:250.
• Romans 3:21-25: “Paul’s words here are absolute thunderbolts against free choice.”
• “‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ and ‘There is no distinction’ [Rom. 3:23, 22]. I ask you, could he put it more plainly? Show me a worker of free choice and tell me whether in that enterprise of his he also sins.” AE 33:265.

Merits of Condignity and Merits of Congruity

• AE 33:266ff: Luther refutes the distinction between merits de congruo (fitting merits), which God rewards, not on their worthy, but because it is fitting for God to reward the attempt, and merits de condigno, (worthiness), which are works done by help of the Holy Spirit, which merit a reward. Luther says that it makes God a regarder of works.

The Defense of Grace

• “Now, the things which lead to eternal salvation I take to be the words and works of God, which are presented to the human will so that it may apply itself to them or turn away from them. By the words of God, moreover, I mean both the law and the gospel, the law requiring works and the gospel faith. For there is nothing else that leads either to grace of God or to eternal salvation except the word and work of God, since grace or the Spirit is life itself, to which we are led by God’s word and work. This life or eternal salvation, however, is something that passes human comprehension, as Paul quotes from Isaiah [64:4] in 1 Corinthians 2:9: ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.’ It is also included among the chief articles of our faith, where we say [in the creed]: ‘And the life everlasting.’ And what free choice is worth in relation to this article, Paul shows in 1 Corinthians 2:10, where he says: ‘God has revealed it to us through his Spirit.’ This means that unless the Spirit had revealed it, no man’s heart would have any knowledge or notion of it, much less applied itself to it or seek after it.” AE 33:105-106.
• “Why, in that case Paul’s whole argument in defense of grace is meaningless. For the whole purpose of his epistle is to show that we can do nothing even when we seem to be doing well, just as he says in the same chapter that Israel in pursuing righteousness did not attain to righteousness, while the Gentiles attained to it without pursuing it [Rom. 9:30f.].” AE 33:191.
• “Before man is created and is a man, he neither does nor attempts to do anything toward becoming a creature, and after he is created he neither does nor attempts to do anything toward remaining a creature, but both of these things are done by the same will of the omnipotent power and goodness of God… In just the same way, before man is changed into a new creature of the kingdom of the Spirit, he does nothing and attempts nothing to prepare himself for this renewal and this Kingdom, and when he has been recreated he does nothing and attempts nothing toward remaining in this Kingdom, but the Spirit alone does both of these things in us, recreating us without us and preserving us without our help in our recreated state, as also James says: ‘Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of his power, that we might be a beginning of his creature’ [James 1:18]” AE 33:242
• “So long as it is ignorant of Christ and does not believe in him, it cannot will or strive after anything good but necessarily serves this sin without knowing it. … all the texts that speak of
  Christ must consequently stand opposed to free choice…” AE 33:287.

Comfort in the Bondage of the Will

• After citing Romans 7 and Galatians 5, Luther argues: “If human nature is so evil that in those born anew of the Spirit it not only does not endeavor after the good but actually strives and fights against it, how should it endeavor after the good in those who are not yet born anew but are still ‘in the old man’ and in bondage to Satan?” AE 33:288.
• “For my own part, I frankly confess that even if it were possible, I should not wish to have free choice given to me, or to have anything left in my own hands by which I might strive toward salvation. For, on the one hand, I should be unable to stand firm and keep hold of it amid so many adversities and perils and so many assaults of demons, seeing that even one demon is mightier than all men, and no man at all could be saved; and on the other hand, even if there were no perils or adversities or demons, I should nevertheless have to labor under perpetual uncertainty and to fight as one beating the air, since even if I lived and worked to eternity, my conscience would never be assured and certain how much it ought to do to satisfy God.” AE 33:288-289.

Luther’s Conclusion

• “Satan is the ruler of this world…he will not let men go who are his captives unless he is forced to do so by the divine power of the Holy Spirit… it is evident that there can be no such thing as free choice.” AE 33:293.
• “Similarly, if we believe that original sin has so ruined us that even in those who are led by the Spirit it causes a great deal of trouble by struggling against the good, it is clear that in a man devoid of the Spirit there is nothing left that can turn toward the good, but only toward evil.” AE 33:293.
• “If the Jews, who pursued righteousness to the utmost of their powers, rather ran headlong into unrighteousness, while the Gentiles, who pursued ungodliness, attained righteousness freely and unexpectedly, then it is also manifest from this very fact and experience that man without grace can will nothing but evil.” AE 33:293.
• “To sum up: If we believe that Christ has redeemed men by his blood, we are bound to confess that the whole man was lost; otherwise, we should make Christ either superfluous or the redeemer of only the lowest part of man, which would be blasphemy…” AE 33:293.
• After ripping on Erasmus for nearly 300 pages, Luther appeals to Erasmus’ genius, confessing him to be better than himself in everything except in this respect, and stating, “but I pray that the Lord may very soon make you as much superior to me in this matter as you are in all others.” AE 33:295.

Conclusion

• Luther’s The Bondage of the Will is one of his most influential writings outside of those included in the Lutheran Confessions. Melanchthon and Chemnitz used many of his arguments in the Augsburg Confession (XVIII) and the Formula (II) on Free Will, but also regarding the cause of sin (AC XIX), Original Sin (AC ACII), Justification (AP IV), Election (FC XI), and of course Article Three of the Small Catechism.
• While The Bondage of the Will should be read in light of the Lutheran Confessions, there still remain difficult passages, which appear to contradict what the Confessions say. Lutherans should hold to what the Confessions say.
• The Bondage of the Will is a masterclass in Principals of Biblical Interpretation, defending against magisterial human reason, which can be applied not only to arguments on the bondage of the will, but on the Trinity, divinity of Christ, and real presence in the Lord’s Supper.
• Luther is arguing to let God be God.
• The Bondage of the Will is essential in understanding Grace!

Luther’s Hymn

My own good works all came to naught,

No grace or merit gaining;

Free will against God’s judgment fought,

Dead to all good remaining.

My fears increased till sheer despair

Let only death to be my share;

The pangs of hell I suffered. (Martin Luther, Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice, LSB 556:3)