Martin Luther's bondage of the will

MARTIN LUTHER'S BONDAGE OF THE WILL

The Freewill Question

 

HISTORICAL SETTING[1]

In December of 1525, the towering theological figure of the 16^th century and the Reformation, Martin Luther, published the work, De Servo Arbitrio (Bondage of the Will, literally, “On Unfree Will”). The work was to so influence later theology He ushered in one of the greatest movements of both Christian and Western history when he nailed his ninety-five thesis against the Castle Church in Wittenberg October 31, 1517, challenging the tenets of the Catholic church – the Reformation. His fiery reforming spirit stirred up both love and hate, but certainly not indifference, as he challenged primarily what he saw to be the unbiblical doctrines of the church, and the abuses that arose from them. The times badly called for some kind of reform.

Luther was by no means the only one concerned. The man Erasmus, the preeminent humanist scholar and theologian in all of Europe, respected and considered by many as the “prince of humanists[2]”, himself sought to rid the church of pride, obscurantism, greed, and the dead soulless religion and scholasticism of its leaders particularly. As Packer and Johnston (1957:15) comment, “scholasticism, bishops and mendicant friars all suffer under the pen of Erasmus...much of the scorn which Luther was to pour out on reigning abuses can be found in this early work[3] of Erasmus.”

But the two men were driven by different passions. Erasmus represented the voice of reason and moderation. His concern was primarily to restore morality and ethics to the church. The level-headed Dutchman would concede any thing that might disturb the peace. These words best describe the man. “He had a conservative turn of mind, for all his clear-sightedness, and to him the revolutionary was more to be feared than the ignorant devotee of an old but corrupt system. His reforming ideals were based on an undogmatic Christianity, an eviscerated Christianity precisely because it was a Christianity without Christ at the deepest level. The epigram is irresistible – Erasmus was shrewd but shallow, a man of cool calculation rather than of burning conviction. He could never stand contra mundum” (Packer and Johnston, 1957:19).    

 

Importance of the Work

Amid all his writings, for Luther, his De Servo Arbitrio (Bondage of the Will) stood as the magnum opus. As Kolb (2005:9) quotes him, “‘none of my works is worth anything except’ the catechism and De servo arbitrio.”

For Luther, the need for reform was primarily one of doctrine and De servo arbitrio is written with that purpose in mind. Most of the controversies[4] which he sparked[5] really boiled down to the question of freewill in man and its relationship to the doctrines of grace of God and salvation. It is this question, amidst his other theological and pastoral concerns, which he called his “jugular vein”. “I heartily praise you on this account, that you alone of all my opponents have attacked the real issue [the bondage of the will], i.e. my central concern. You have not wearied me with those extraneous issues, which are trivia rather than issues, such as the papacy, purgatory or indulgences...you alone have seen the hinge on which everything turns.”

The condemnation of his Thesis 13 of the Disputatio Heidelbergae Habita (Heidelberg Disputation)– “Free will after the fall, exists in name only and as long as it does what it is able to do, it commits a mortal sin” – was condemned by the Pope Leo X, “Exsurge Domine” on June 15, 1520. This bull was to kick off a chain of events. It will be followed by Luther's reply in the Assertio Omnium Articulorum (December, 1520) further proclaiming the objectionable articles. The Assertio was then responded to by Erasmus in De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio (DLA, hereafter) in 1524, followed Luther's response in the De Servo Arbitrio a year later in 1525.

 

Inevitable Confrontation

Watching the upcoming passionate Luther, it is clear that the Dutch scholar admired the German reformer, but remained deeply reserved about his radical unorthodox ways. While Erasmus was initially supportive of Luther's drive for reform, he wished to distance himself from the man as much as possible. Perhaps it was not possible to do so for a scholar of his influence. It is reported that at the Diet of Worms in 1520, when asked by Frederick the Wise to give a judgment on Luther's case, Erasmus answered in such a vague noncommittal way, “What a wonderful little man he is. You never know where you are with him.” Luther later commented, “Erasmus is an eel. Only Christ can grab him” (Rupp and Watson, 1969:2).

For a scholar of his importance, Erasmus was not to hold this neutral position for too long. When Luther, in defiance of the bull against him, published the Assertio and showed a more radical stance on free will, pressure mounted on Erasmus to respond. Luther's earlier Heidelberg Disputation had mostly limited itself to arguing against free will from the biblical doctrines of original sin. This time he argued also from the absolute necessity of all things, resulting in some form of fatalism. Luther proclaimed, “...I have wrongly said that free will before grace exists in name only. I should have said frankly: 'free will is a fiction, a name without a correspondent in reality.' Because no one indeed has power freely to think of good or evil...all things happen by absolute necessity” (McSorley, 1969:255).[6] The objectionable (for the Catholic establishment) teachings of Luther were spreading like wild fire especially among the masses, and the greatest theologian on the continent was furthered pressured lend the support of his pen. The heat was mounting on Erasmus from Pope Leo X, Pope Adrian, the King Henry VIII of England, to respond to the German reformer. In his concern for Luther, Erasmus first advised moderation. But when these fell on deaf German ears, we have the Diatribe.

   

GENERAL COMMENTS

De servo arbitrio is four times longer than the Erasmus'. Its style is sharp, polemical, even vitriolic at some instances, and has a forcefulness of language that is not only characteristic of Luther, but of polemical writings of the times. One cannot help balking at the abrasive ad hominem jabs which would today be considered completely unsuitable for writing of this level. Luther, for example, accuses Erasmus of arguing his case as “a man drunk or asleep, blurting our between snores 'Yes!' 'No!'[7]; of Erasmus, “only a person in a stupor or a daze”; “our friend the Diatribe grows more stupid still”; “filthy Sophists”[8]. 

Luther adopts the rigorous and tiresome method of answering Erasmus' Diatribe line by line, and it seems the approach was ill-advised since, as comments Rupp and Watson (1969:10) “the pressure on Luther in 1525, the watershed of his career, was such that he could not possible hope to complete the debate on this scale, and he himself later admitted he took no notice at all of the last chapters of Erasmus, which are perhaps the best part of the work.”

Layout

The book is divided into eight sections:

I. Introduction

1. Point by point review of Erasmus' Diatribe: an affirmation of the necessity of all things based on God's foreknowledge, and a treatment of Erasmus' objections to Luther's unfree will as initially set in his Assertio.
2. Luther's dismissal of Erasmus' appeal to church teaching and to church authority for proof of freewill. Further dismissal of Erasmus' appeal to the ambiguity of Scriptures on such matters.
3. Luther's debunking of Erasmus' use of Scriptures to defend freewill. Shows them to be monumental misinterpretations.
4. Erasmus' texts in the Scriptures which deny freewill. Luther acknowledges the tension and brings explanation.
5. Further treatment of Erasmus' biblical texts against freewill.

VII. Luther's biblical doctrine of the will proper.

VIII. Conclusion

 

While De servo arbitrio is not a systematic rendition of Luther's theology as, say, Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, its many digressions cover a number of theological topics of concern to the Reformer. Some of these include:

- Doctrine of Scripture: Luther sees the Scripture as holding ultimate authority in all matters on which it comments. For him, scriptures never play a subordinate role to either Church authority or tradition. His avowed commitment here is seen as he challenges Erasmus' tendency to ascribe ultimate authority on issues of doctrine to the church, and only a secondary place to the scriptures. “Is it not enough to have submitted your judgment to Scripture? Do you submit it to the Church as well? – why, what can the Church settle that Scripture did not settle first” (BOW, 69)?

Against Erasmus' classification of the Scriptures in parts that are “recondite” (hidden) and “quite plain”, Luther lays out the perspicuity of Scripture and its centrality in attaining the full knowledge of Christ. “...many passages in Scriptures are obscure and hard to elucidate, but that is due, not to the exalted nature of their subject, but to our own linguistic and grammatical ignorance; and it does not in anyway prevent our knowing all the contents of Scripture” (BOW 71).

- Law and Gospel

- Faith and Reason

- God hidden and God preached

- Grace and works etc

 

The Heart of the Matter

What is Luther's purpose is arguing for the servum arbitrium unfree will? It is what Luther calls the “cardo rerum”, the hinge on which every other doctrine pivots. The purpose, then, is “to investigate what ability 'free-will' has, in what respect it is the subject of Divine action and how it stands related to the grace of God” (BOW, 78). So crucial was the topic that “he who dissents from that statement should acknowledge that he is no Christian.”

A second purpose for Luther is to investigate, “whether God foresees anything contingently, or whether we do all things of necessity” (BOW, 79).

Thus we find in BOW, a concern to (i) present a theological anthropology; (ii) assert the omnipotence of God, especially as relates to the gospel of justification; (iii) emphasize the grace of God, (as Luther, “against free will on behalf of the grace of God”); (iv) eliminate from theology and pastoral practice every form of Pelagianism[9]; (v) show the extensiveness and totality of original sin; (vi) finally, Luther's pastoral concern is to eliminate the use of the word “freewill” because, in its common usage, it wrongly implies an independent ability in man, even in the absence of grace – which is not its theological sense. (McSorley, 1969:304-306).   

It is clear that Luther's greatest drive is to show that God's grace, the work wrought by God alone, is the only agent that is operative in the salvation of man. Nothing in man, no freewill, will avail to anything, no matter how little is ascribed to this freewill.

 

Luther's Use of “Freewill”

Key to understanding this work and fore-guarding from any misinterpretation is the fact that Luther's working conception of the word “free will” (liberum arbitrium) is as “a power freely turning in any direction, yielding to none and subject to none” (BOW, 105). It is what is today termed “libertarian freewill”[10]. The context in which Luther addresses it is one of ability to will towards the knowledge of God, to will to do good deeds which are efficacious for salvation, and the ability to distinguish good from evil[11]. This is the “freewill” which Luther refutes, and his position must be evaluated within this context. His distinction here is helpful:

“We may still in good faith teach people to use it (freewill) to credit man with 'free will' in respect, not of what is above him, but of what is below him. ...in regard to his money and possessions he has a right to use them...according to his own 'free will' – though that very free will is overruled by the free-will of God alone. However, with regard to God, and in all that bears on salvation or damnation, he has no 'free-will', but is a captive, prisoner and bondslave, either to the will of God, or to the will of Satan” (BOW, 106)[12] (Italics added).   

THE DEBATE

It seems our debate starts of on a wrong footing, with both participants really not addressing the opponent's arguments on its own terms but rather objecting to particular issues which they deemed reprehensible. As we said above, De servo arbitrio was a response to Erasmus' De libero arbitrio, which was itself a response to Luther's earlier Assertio. As McSorley (1969:282) provides, “Erasmus shows little appreciation of the true meaning of Luther's thesis of the unfree will, namely, that the will of fallen man apart from grace is totally incapable of doing anything for salvation, totally unfree to do anything good coram Deo [(before God)]”. Rather, Erasmus takes Luther's more philosophical supporting argument, necessitarian argument, to task, seeing it as just another spin on the fatalistic or deterministic doctrines of Mannichee or Wycliffe[13]

Further, we must understand what conception of liberum arbitrium (freewill) in Erasmus it is that Luther finds objectionable by understanding Erasmus' definition and the concerns he raises.

For one, in betrayal of his scholarship and Classical learning, Erasmus is very ambiguous about which freewill he is arguing. His definition of liberum arbitrium is “a power of the human will by which a man may apply himself to those things that lead to eternal salvation, or turn away from the same.”[14]

The definition[15], indeed equates Erasmus with the Pelagians[16] and puts him as a loner among theologians throughout church history. Even the Ockhamist/nominalist theologian, Gabriel Biel, who was later condemned by the Council of Trent, defined freewill in man as pertaining only to natural things, not salvation. There is no mention of grace, no indication of the work of God. This position seems to ground the efficacy of grace in man's will. In fact, it makes grace superfluous[17].

 

Having stated this, Erasmus contradicts himself[18] by giving assent to “those who deny that man can will good without special grace” (BOW, 144). Further, he affirms that “the human will after sin is so depraved that it has lost its freedom and is forced to serve sin, and cannot recall itself to a better state” (BOW, 145). Luther's accusation of Erasmus is deserved, “the 'free-will' you define is one thing, and the 'free-will' you defend is another” (Ibid).

 

Erasmus' Objections

Amidst this ambiguity, let us allow Erasmus to raise the questions himself, that we may see and judge the strength of Luther's response. Erasmus' main concerns or objections are these:

ñ Obligation implies ability, therefore if God commands man to obey his precepts (and he does), then man is able to will for or against good and evil.

ñ If the will can do nothing, what is the purpose of the laws, precepts, threats and promises?

ñ The “works of the law” which Paul sets as inefficacious for salvation[19] refer to the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament (OT)[20].

ñ Luther's rendition of the foreknowledge of God results in every human action being determined, which obliterates human moral responsibility.

ñ If everything happens by necessity, there are no morally justifiable grounds for God to hold people accountable or punish them.

ñ If God is the cause of the impenitence in people (by reason of his sovereignty in all things), how can he invite them to repentance against his own will?

 

Amidst the maze of material, we can very broadly group Luther's response under two big headings – the soteriological argument, and the necessitarian argument. The soteriological arguments center on man's servum arbitrium (enslaved will) as related to his salvation, doing good in the eyes of God, and bondage by Satan and original sin. The necessitarian arguments[21] are really Luther's philosophical deductions from the theology set forth in his soteriological arguments. They argue the absence of freewill due to man's creatureliness (not just sinfulness) and subjection to an omnipotent, omniscient God. Man's contingency in the face of a necessary God is irreconcilable with freewill. By virtue, then, of God's infallible, and non-contingent foreknowledge and eternal will, “this bombshell knocks 'free will' flat, and utterly shatters it”[22].

 

SOTERIOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS

These are by far the most powerful of Luther's arguments. Though he has touched these topics throughout the book in dealing with Erasmus' objections, Luther leaves their full treatment for the last part of the book.

Luther affirms the absolute necessity of the grace of God through Christ's work in freeing man and saving him from bondage to sin, this against every form of Pelagianism and attempt to do this in his own merit[23]. 

 

Universal Guilt

Following the interpretation of Romans 1:18, Luther shows that for all of mankind – with no distinction between ones noble in character or those of the most depraved hearts – “Paul does not hesitate to consign them all under wrath and proclaim them all ungodly and unrighteous” (BOW, 275). Further, from experience, men in all their alleged freewill are not wont to seeking God, nor are they able to know him, or to by themselves grasp the way of the cross and faith which he has ordained for salvation (Rom. 1:21; 1 Cor. 1:23).

Before God, man is so guilt-ridden that no amount of good which he may strife at is effective. “What other conclusion is possible than that 'free will' is at its worst when it is at its best, and that the more it tries the worse it becomes and acts” (BOW, 278)? This is what Althaus (1966:149) calls the double emphasis of Luther's doctrine of sin, “man is guilty in relationship to God, not only when he does not care but also when he is very serious about morality. This seriousness allows him to fall prey to the most evil sin of all, religious sin, by trusting in himself.”

 

Universal Dominion of Sin or Original Sin     

“...both Jews and Gentiles are all under sin” (Rom. 3:9). Owing to the pervasiveness of sin in man, and its control of his faculties, none seeks after God. “They are all gone out of the way” (Ps. 14:2-3). The will, reason and the highest faculties of man are all shown to be fully ineffective towards any good before God because they are subject to sin. Hence, “If it is granted and settled that 'free-will has lost its freedom, and is bound in the service of sin, and can will no good[24], I can gather nothing from these words but that 'free-will' is an empty term whose reality is lost” (BOW, 148).  

 

Dominion of the Will

Luther never uses the term “freewill” as a noun, or as an innate faculty of man which may choose or refrain from choosing. Rather, there is a will (voluntas) whose state may be described by the adjectives liberum or servum – of course, he argues that the former does not exist, and this for the following reasons. First negatively, man, by the nature of sin in him, is bound to always willing to do evil. In addition, he is necessarily under the dominion of Satan's will (2 Tim. 2:26), to which his nature acquiesces willingly. Even positively, when redeemed by God, man's will remains captive since it is now being ridden by God to accomplish His will. What ever way, there is no will which is free in the sense of independence. Hence, “man's will is like a beast standing between two riders. If God rides, it will and goes where God wills (Ps. 73:22-23)...If Satan rides, it wills and goes where Satan wills” (BOW, 103-104). Any alleged neutral ground of “just willing, pure and simple” as Erasmus pushed, must be repudiated. The will, having lost its freedom and forced to serve sin (as Erasmus had granted, see footnote 24) cannot possibly be on neutral grounds, for “neither God nor Satan permits there to be in us mere willing in the abstract” (BOW, 147).

 

The Righteousness of God as Separate from the Law

Crucial to Luther's entire life was the understanding he gained from Rom. 3:21-25, “the righteousness of God without the law, is manifested...even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ

unto all them that believe in Him...being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus...” Luther's argument here is pithy but powerful. If God's righteousness (“the supreme concern of 'free-will'”[25]) does not come through the law[26], how can 'free will' work to achieve it? (BOW, 289). “This word without does away with morally good works, and moral righteousness, and preparations for grace” (Ibid). It is clear that for Luther the very necessity for the work of Christ in revealing God's righteousness by grace which is extrinsic to man, definitively lays the matter to rest. Human endeavour in freewill amounts to absolutely nothing in respect of salvation or pleasing God[27].

 

Other Arguments of Note

Perhaps Erasmus' biggest objection to Luther's denial of freewill as he understood it was that if God commands man to do something, then there is an ability within man to perform the command. It would be ridiculous to ask a man to, for example, choose between two roads when only one of the roads was available (BOW, 158). It would be callous to chide someone, say a blind man, and ask him to see treasure if he wills, putting expectations on a person (even punishing them for failure!) while being fully aware of their inability to perform them (BOW, 151). Thus, God's commands imply an ability within man do or refrain from doing, hence freewill.

Luther's rebuttal first ridicules Erasmus' inference and likens his inference to that of the Pelagians who from this passage denied grace completely. He then shows that by the rules of logic and grammar, that the imperative (what ought to be done) cannot be taken in the sense of the indicative (what is done or can be done). Moreover, that the Hebrew language often uses the future indicative for the imperative, eg. Exod. 20, “Thou shalt not kill”. Hence, imperatives from God do not presuppose, or indicate an ability to perform them. Rather God “uses these phrases to goad and rouse him, that he may know by sure experience how unable he is to do any of these things” (BOW, 153).   

As is observed, the soteriological arguments really center on biblical doctrines of sin, anthropology, and the need for grace.

 

 

NECESSITARIAN ARGUMENT

Luther's argument could formally be stated thus:

(I)   God foresees nothing contingently, but foresees all things eternally and immutably through his infallible will.

(II) Whatever God foresees and foreknows must happen necessarily[28], otherwise God would have been mistaken[29].

(III) Therefore, freewill is utterly shattered.

 

This argument of Luther's has much repulsed people, for it smacks of much determinism[30] and fatalism, and the charges to this effect have not been few. It seems to advocate, not just the bondage of man's will as a result of original sin and Satan (even God), but indicates a cosmic necessity. If God's foreknowledge is infallible and immutable (as especially his perfection will incline one to affirm), then how can contingent beings not be said to do things of necessity? As Luther renders it, “if God is not mistaken in what He foreknows, then what He foreknows must necessarily come to pass” (BOW, 213).

Further, Luther insists that the propositions, “God is omnipotent” and “God foreknows all things”, once conceded, we are “at once compelled by irrefutable logic to admit that we were not made by our own will, but by necessity, and accordingly that we do not do anything by right of 'free-will', but according to what God foreknew and works by His infallible and immutable counsel and power” (Ibid).

If Luther has argued purely on the basis of biblical doctrine that man is a slave to sin and therefore has no freewill with respect to salvation, we seem here to be foraying into entirely new territory. The argument is no longer with respect to a will bound (servum arbitrium), but to the vacuousness and idiocy of any claim to a will at all, seeing that God's prior action necessitates all things. Luther is categorical about this. “All things take place by necessity. There is no obscurity or ambiguity about it” (BOW, 82).

Luther dismisses as “absurd formula” or “empty verbiage” (BOW, 82) any subtle distinctions that will make his inference merely logically possible, but not necessary. Particular here is the Scholastic distinction between necessity of the consequence (necessita consequentis or absoluta, i.e. Necessarily, if God knows that p, then p') and necessity of the thing consequent (necessita consequentiae or conditionata i.e. If God knows that p, then necessarily p').[31] Scholastic theologians had distinguished these two to show that the immutable foreknowledge of God (which the Thomistic scholars strongly affirmed) did not logically translate into a necessity on the contingent being that excluded his freewill.[32] [33] All it did was establish that necessarily everything God foreknows happens as he has foreknown them. How this foreknowledge works is not entirely known. But in any case, its inner workings would not exclude the truth of a real choice or possibility of alternative action on the part of the human contingent. Luther rejected this compatibilist position.

 

Was Luther a Determinist?

In the analysis of this argument of Luther's it is hard to tell with certainty if Luther was really pushing some kind of universal determinism here, or merely affirming God's sovereignty and providence. Is he denying categorically that man's will is completely passive (or perhaps nonexistent) as it is necessarily moved by God? Does this set God as the active will behind the occurrence of everything? What then becomes of distinctions between good and evil? Such phrases as “God also works evil deeds in the ungodly” (BOW, 204), are ambiguous. What becomes of culpability and the basis for judgment? Is it contradicting his statements above that man has freedom in things below – natural freedom? Scholarship is divided on the extent of Luther's philosophical position of servum arbitrium.  

So, does Luther's argument here advocate determinism? In the midst of all the ambiguity and Luther's lack of philosophical subtlety, there seems to be good ground to say that a concept of liberum arbitrium exists, and that he does not do away with it completely (see footnotes 12 and 27). He grants spontaneity of freedom (a lack of compulsion) but not liberty of indifference (power of alternative action).[34] We may conclude Luther's position here with Kenny (1979:73) thus, “For Luther, both good men and bad men do what they want: what they lack is the ability to change their desires (this is the 'necessity of immutability'): the will is not free in the sense that it cannot change itself from a bad will into a good one; it can only passively undergo such a change itself at the hand of God. Spontaneity, [is] understood as lack of compulsion...”

We also conclude with McSorley (1969:328) that this argument is to be understood “primarily as an affirmation of the infallibility of God's foreknowledge and the universality of his providence. It is not a rejection of liberum arbitrium in the Catholic sense[35], but of a pagan concept of autonomous liberum arbitrium which would somehow be independent of God's sovereign and universal rule of creatures.”

 

The Message of the Necessitarian Argument

We disagree with Luther's necessitarian argument as we shall demonstrate below, but to give it a fair assessment in light of other comments in his work, it seems that his denial of freewill is with regard to any conception that establishes it as autonomous and able to perform good works in the eyes of God. This denies the place of grace (God's sovereign work through and through), opposes the sovereignty of God in all things, establishes a righteousness of one's own working, and makes the work of Christ superfluous. This is the heart of his contention.

As McSorley (1969:317) opines, it seems “Luther is so interested in emphasizing the universal necessity (conditionata) which results from God's foreknowledge and will that he does not stop to reflect sufficiently on the contingency and mutability of the will in itself (absoluta)”.

It appears that Luther's disagreement with the distinction between the two necessities is really because they insinuate that man may exercise his freewill as he wishes in order to get saved.

 

 

EVALUATION

While, as we have said above, Luther's concept of liberum arbitrium is not necessarily deterministic, and we do not think it is. It however lacks the philosophical refinedness to make it unambiguous and precise. Luther's eager dismissal of the Scholastics makes him to reject such helpful philosophical categories as the necessity of consequence and necessity of the thing consequent.

Luther's lack of certainty about which concept of free will he was repudiating, at least his failure to spell it out clearly and consistently, leads to lots of confusion. Thus, at some points, he seems to affirm a will which is bound only with regard to things salvation and the working of righteous deeds before God – which rightly is the biblical doctrine. At other points he seems to deny outright that there is any freewill, with no distinctions nor qualifications made, including natural freedom.

 

Luther's Concept of Un-free will.

In spite of his complete rejection of freewill, and all the ambiguity present, Luther still grants his servum arbitrium the ability of willing something, so that man is not extrinsically coerced. He has already proven that this will is in bondage to one higher force or other at every stage of its existence. There is much to be said about his defence of this conception of the will.

At best Luther does not squarely address Erasmus' pressing question; at worst he evades it. How are we to make sense of moral imperatives[36] and God's holding people responsible for their actions if there is no freewill at all, or everything is necessitated by God's foreknowledge? How is individual moral responsibility, culpability and judgment (hereafter, MRCJ) to be established without freewill? On what basis does God, the just judge, punish sins if things happen of necessity – or worse, if God is himself the efficient cause of the sin? This is the heart of the issue that is immediately raised in any conversation about freewill. If Luther has given a particular concept of the will, and has shown its captivity in reference to the biblical doctrines of Fall, original sin, anthropology etc, he must needs give an account of how his rendition of a bound will squares with MRCJ. There is no doubt that the Bible always requires an obedient response from man. Even Luther's view that the law is strictly for the purpose of revealing the inability of man to meet God's requirements presuppose a responsibility on man to assent to, or to willingly obey God's law or turn from them. There can be no debate on this point. Indeed, Erasmus' adducing of Deut. 30:11-14 really was aiming at how Luther could sustain a cosmic moral order of cause and effect, sin and punishment, personal guilt, blessings, curses in his scheme.

One of the driving goals of Luther has been to show God's sovereignty in all things. The question then, as stated by Ciocchi (2008:573) is “how it can be true both that God is sovereign (omnipotent and omniscient) and that human beings have the sort of freedom necessary for moral responsibility.” Can man really be morally culpable in Luther's rendition of freewill?

For all Luther's impassioned arguments for the vacuousness of the term “free-will” he grants it an ability to act not out of compulsion, in order to account for God's righteousness meting of punishment. For all his disregard for Scholastic subtleties and sophistries, he is himself forced to distinguish necessity of immutability from necessity of coercion[37]. Luther's move to do away with freewill, or to construe it as necessitated[38], yet to affirm responsibility merely in words, is by no means convincing[39]. This simply shows that there is a real issue here with upholding the two biblical, but ostensibly paradoxical teachings of God's absolute sovereignty with some kind of human freewill. The MRCJ question necessitates freewill[40], whatever conception of it is given. “Given the clear biblical assertion of moral responsibility and the traditional use of the term 'free will' to stand for whatever sort of freedom is necessary for moral responsibility, it follows that the Bible itself indirectly teaches that human beings have free will. But it does not follow that the Bible teaches – directly or indirectly – a particular account of free will. Biblical teaching supplies an implicit endorsement of free will, and nothing more” (Ciocchi, 2008:583).

Luther should have been consistent in affirming the biblical doctrine of man's bondage with regards to responding to grace, works of righteousness, intimate knowledge of God – in other words, strictly within salvation-related ends. This portrayal maintains natural freedom, and seems to be the thrust of the Bible's account of human freewill. Therefore, regardless of Luther's squabble with the terminology, we maintain that human freewill as a genuine part of man be preserved. This, especially for the purpose of MRCJ, and because it is such a fundamental assumption both in the Bible and in the daily experience of man. However, we must here state that, driven purely by the doctrines of the Bible with regard to the Fall and the extensiveness of sin's corruption, that it may be untenable to defend libertarian freewill.

 

Is God Responsible for Evil?

Upon his shaky necessitarian argument, Luther begins to erect arguments that cannot but be weak. Seeing the obvious implication of establishing God's will as the necessary antecedent of all things – namely, that God would be responsible for evil – Luther provides,

“Since God moves and works all in all, he moves and works of necessity even in Satan and the ungodly. But he moves and works according to what they are and what he finds them to be...Here you see that when God works in evil men, evil deeds result; yet God, though he does evil by means of evil men, cannot act evilly himself, for he is good and cannot do evil; but uses evil instruments, which cannot escape the impulse and movement of his power” (BOW, 204).

Perhaps by this Luther feels he has resolved the MRCJ matter and of exempting God from the origin of sin. But the matter still stares him in the face. How did Satan and man fall? Luther has simply taken fallen creatures as his starting point. Did Satan and man have freewill before their fall? If they did, then Luther's necessitarian argument (all things happen by necessity as a result of God's foreknowledge) stands in need of a radical overhaul! It seems Luther has hit a cul-de-sac here because he cannot account for the origin of sin (at least its presence in man)[41] by any appeal to freewill, having already repudiated it by his necessitarian argument. Therefore, prior to the fall, who was responsible for evil? What it God necessarily working in his creatures to bring about evil?

This position seems to make God the source of evil, or sin, and completely alters the cosmic moral sphere. It can further not make sense of the imputation of guilt to man. How then does Luther resolve this impasse?

 

A Costly Concession

Luther's way around this paradox is disturbing! He seems to be saying that since man does everything of necessity, God really condemns unfree creatures who are not deserving of condemnation (they act necessarily), but yet his justice is maintained through all this. Luther then sees the concept of God's “undeserved grace” shown to man as a validation for “undeserved damnation”! (BOW, 232-235). Luther, by this move, establishes an arbitrariness about God that we do not think is supported by Scriptures. It places tensions and contradictions between God's rules of reason and ethics, and natural ethics and reason. This stance is supported by Luther's theological distinction between Deus praedicatus (God preached) and Deus absconditus (God hidden)[42], which, as Althaus (1966:276) has surmised, “teaches that God has a double will, and even a double reality”.  

The Scriptural conception of God's transcendence with regards to these things is that his realm and laws far surpass man's, but not that they contradict man's, since reason and ethics all depend on him. Thus there can be no arbitrariness about him.    

      

Perhaps no part of De servum arbitrium has been quoted more extensively than Luther's “man's will is like a beast standing between two riders. If God rides, it wills and goes where God wills...if Satan rides, it wills and goes where Satan wills. Nor may it choose to which rider it will run, or which it will seek; but the riders themselves fight to decide who shall have and hold it” (BOW, 103-104). The idea that man is bound to sin and to the oppression of the devil has been proven beyond doubt from the Bible, and is relevant if it demonstrates that God's liberating grace is necessary for a freeing of man's will for an assent to salvation. However his imagery that the will of man is as a beast between two riders, in reference to Luke 11:18-22, raises some questions. When Luther pushes the imagery to make the point that the deciding factor in man's change of will is the overcoming and defeat of Satan by a stronger one, Christ, even more questions are raised. He does this failing to make room for the place of a personal decision and profession in salvation. McSorley (1969:335-340), after evaluating the large body of scholarly literature on Luther's imagery here, and showing that Luther had departed from traditional theological consensus (including his beloved Augustine!) in his use of this imagery, provides the points of this departure: Luther likened this animal, not to freewill but to voluntas (will); denied man's choice in who will 'ride' and dominate him; he made God himself the rider of the good will and not grace; Luther made Satan the rider of the evil will.

In these, Luther rather shows us a struggle between God and man for control of a totally passive will There even is no willing here, something he had granted earlier on. This seems to be the very picture of extrinsic coercion that he rejected. The deduction is therefore warranted – that for anyone who is not presently God's, this is only so because God has not yet won him back from Satan. It paints a picture of toddlers struggling back and forth for a toy. Pushing it further, Luther's strong theology of God's sovereignty cannot be denied, but this picture too closely resembles a cosmic dualism. Luther mentions no call to conversion, no repentance, no admonition to steadfast faith, to perseverance, no call to sanctification and good deed. All that Luther has here is dominion by either God or Satan.

 

CONCLUSION 

As we must round up this investigation though a lot remains to be said, may we itemize important points of our position:

ñ The New Testament clearly portrays sinners as slaves to sin, and that only through obedient faith in Christ and free surrender can the sinner be set free from this bondage.

ñ The Bible clearly teaches the foreknowledge, omnipotence, and providence of God. But never has this been so construed as to imply any kind of necessity, or the preclusion of some kind of free choice.

ñ The Bible presupposes some kind of freedom in man. This freedom is essential to making sense of moral responsibility, culpability and judgment (MRCJ). This freedom does not contradict the biblical doctrines of God's sovereignty. Our problem today is knowing what kind of freedom man has.

ñ Luther's necessitarian argument does not stand – firstly because we don't believe it to be thoroughly biblical in the end; secondly because it does not stand tall philosophically since it fails to answer the MRCJ question.    

 

We must receive this work in the heart in which it is written. If we know anything of the man Luther, the issue of freewill did not represent speculative philosophical musings for a lazy Sunday afternoon. Rather, they were life and death issues. What was at stake for Luther was the gospel of the grace of God. He knows fully well from experience that confidence in what man could do for himself was only delusional and misleading for it can achieve nothing before God. Hence his thesis to investigate what man can do for himself in the absence of grace. His stance on human will is really motivated by a drive for salvation. There is no doubt that De servo arbitrio is born out of the fires of a zealous spirit, and the warm concerns of a pastoral heart.

Hear Luther, 

But now that God has taken my salvation out the control of my own will, and put it under the control of His, and promised to save me, not according to my working or running, but according to His own grace and mercy, I have the comfortable certainty that He is faithful and will not lie to me, and that He is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break Him or pluck me from Him.

 

The bondage of our will in relation to spiritual matters and salvation must be a comfort. The good news is that God has not left us in that bondage. His grace has been extended through the perfect work of Christ, that those who were bound in sin, under Satan, and under the law, might now be set free in Christ.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

ALTHAUS, P. 1966. The Theology of Martin Luther. Translated from the German by Schultz, R.C. trans. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

 

Catholic Encyclopedia. 2012. [Web:] http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10202b.htm [Date of access: 14 Oct. 2012].

 

CIOCCHI, D.M. 2008. Suspending the Debate About Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. 51(3): 573-590, September.

 

KENNY, A. 1979. The God of the Philosophers. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

 

KOLB, R. 2005. Bound Choice, Election, and Wittenberg Theological Method: From Martin Luther to the Formula of Concord. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

 

LANE, A.N. 1996. John Calvin, The Bondage and Liberation of the Will: A defence of the orthodox doctrine of human choice against Pighius. Translated by Davies, G.I. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academics. 

 

LUTHER, M. 1957[1525]. The Bondage of the Will. Translated from the Latin by Packer, J.I. and Johnston, O.R. Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell.

Martin Luther to the Formula of Concord. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

 

McSORLEY, H.J. 1969. Luther: Right or Wrong? An Ecumenical-Theological Study of Luther's Major Work: The Bondage of the Will. New York: Newman Press.

 

MORELAND, J.P and CRAIG, W.L. 2003. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview.

Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

 

NDT. 1988. New Dictionary of Theology. Leicester, England: InterVarsity Press. 

 

Papal Encyclicals. 2012. [Web:] http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum16.htm [Date of access: 15 Oct. 2012].

RUPP, G.E. and WATSON, P.S. 1969. Luther and Erasmus: Freewill and Salvation. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press.

 

WEATHERFORD, R.C. 1995. Freedom and Determinism. (In Honderich, T., ed. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 292-293.)

 

Wikipedia. 2012. [Web:] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism [Date of access: 12 Oct. 2012].

[1] Indebted to excellent historical survey in Packer and Johnston, 1957, and Rupp and Watson, 1969.

[2] “Humanist” referring not to that “body of philosophies and ethical perspectives that emphasize the value of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally place more importance on rational thought than on strict faith or adherence to principle (Wikipedia)”, but to the “humanities” and Classics, as disciplines of study.

[3] Encomium Moriae (In Praise of Folly). A satirical attack on the moral decline in the church, especially within the ranks of leadership

[4] Disputatio of 1516 against Bartholomaus Bernahardi (Quaestio de viribus et voluntate hominis sine gratia disputata); Heidelberg Disputation (Disputatio Heidelbergae Habita) of April 26, 1518; the Leipzig Disputation against John Eck (June 27 to July 14, 1519) 

[5] Not for the mere sake of starting fights, but by virtue of his goal to bring reform.

[6] WA 7, 146, 3-12

[7] BOW, 146

[8] Ibid, 164-166

[9] In its loose sense, a designation for any doctrine “felt to threaten the primacy of grace, faith and spiritual regeneration over human ability, good works and moral behaviour” (NDT).

[10] Ability to choose between options with no circumstances or constraints existing to incline a person one way or the other (Moreland and Craig, 2003:241).

[11] BOW, 143. Luther distinguishes his position from the Sophists'. For him, even the discernment of good from evil cannot be ascribed to freewill.

[12] Unfortunately, it seems this is one of the few clear instances where Luther will distinguish the senses in which man may have freewill (“what is below”) from the sense in which he does not (“what is above”). But the note must be taken. See footnote 27 for another instance. 

[13] Wycliffe had been condemned at the Council of Constance (1414-1418) precisely for his deterministic position (Kenny, 1979:73). It seems to have been a common strategy of debates to link an opponent's views with those of previously condemned heretics – as far as possible, at least. (Papal Encyclicals).

[14] BOW, 137.

[15] This, if taken in isolation and without reference to other parts of Erasmus' writings in the De Libero Arbitrio or in his later Hyperaspistes, which greatly modify this definition to include God's enabling grace.

[16] In fact, for Luther, the Pelagians were better since they “called a spade a spade” and made it clear that man's freewill was capable unto meritorious good work in the sight of God (BOW, 293); while Erasmus denies the position in word, but affirms it in meaning.

[17] The debate seems to proceed without any awareness that the very position advocated by Erasmus, Semi-Pelagianism, had been condemned by the Second Council of Orange in 529. This was for the unfortunate reason that from the tenth century until 1538, Orange II was not part of the compilations of past councils. They remained unknown and unquoted during this period till the publishing of Peter Crabbe's two-volume Concilia omnia (Cologne: P. Quentel, 1538) (Lane, 1996:xxvii).

[18] At least as he is here reported by Luther.

[19] Galatians 3:21, 28

[20] This follows the tradition of Jerome, whose teaching Luther sees as the single most potent onslaught against the Gospel. Luther reviles him as deserving of hell rather than sainthood (BOW, 284).

[21] Erasmus' DLA concentrated it attack on Luther's necessitarian argument in the Assertio. Hence, instead of Luther sticking to his initial intention to biblically defend the position of an unfree will with regard to enslavement to sin – “for what we are doing is to inquire what free choice can do, what is has done to it, and what is its relation to the grace of God” (BOW, 78) – Luther followed this lead and ended up giving more attention to this second argument.

[22] BOW, 81

[23] Luther's denial of man's merits is particularly against the Semi-Pelagianism of the Scholastics William of Ockham and Gabriel Biel. They distinguished the terms condign merits and congruent merits. Condign merit presupposes an equality between a service and a return; a due. Thus, they are works of righteousness necessitating a reward (de condigno). In congruent merit, a deed does not deserve a return, or falls short of it. In this case then, good deeds are only effective de congruo, through God's grace (Catholic Encyclopedia). Hence, “the assertion that justification is free to all that are justified leaves none to work, merit or prepare themselves, and leaves no work that can be said to carry either congruent or condign merit” (BOW, 294).

[24] A point which Erasmus concedes, “...in those who lack grace (special grace, I mean) reason is darkened but not destroyed, so it is probable that their power of will is not wholly destroyed, but has become ineffective for upright actions” (BOW, 104) [emphasis added].

[25] BOW, 289

[26] Luther's understanding of the law is that is plays a double function: 'civil' – concerned with enforcing order and restraining evil and disobedience; 'theological' or 'spiritual' – concerned with revealing the sinfulness and helplessness of the heart, shows how far sinners fall short of God's righteous requirements, reveals God's wrath, and shows the need for God's righteousness alone (Althaus, 1966:251-260).

[27] Here we see again one of the few but clearest distinctions made between freewill unto salvation and pleasing God, and freewill in non-salvific terms: “And though I grant that 'free-will' by its endeavour can advance in some direction, namely, in the direction of good works, or the righteousness of the civil or moral law, yet it does not advance towards God's righteousness, nor does God deem its efforts in any respect worthy to gain His righteousness” (BOW, 289).

[28] “For the will of God is effective and cannot be impeded, since power belongs to God's nature; and his wisdom is such that He cannot be deceived” (BOW, 80)

[29] This added clause is explicitly stated in BOW, 215.

[30] In this case, the notion that “all our mental states and acts, including choices and decisions, and all our actions are effects necessitated by preceding causes. Thus our futures are in fact fixed and unalterable...” (Weatherford, 1995:293)

[31] The distinction made by Thomas Aquinas, for example, is that necessitas consequentis is the necessity of something in itself, excluding contingencies, counterfactuals, or alternative modes of being. For example, 2+2=4, is taken as absoluta since its truth is said to obtain is all possible worlds (McSorley, 1969:232-233).

[32] Luther's “If God foreknew that Judas would be a traitor, Judas became a traitor of necessity, and it was not in the power of Judas, nor of any creature to alter it, or change his will from that which God has foreseen...” (BOW, 213) is fallacious since all that the proposition proves is that necessarily when God foreknows something, the thing happens. It does not establish that the thing happens out of necessity. Hence there are other ways that God's foreknowledge can be construed without determinism. Erasmus' comment, “not all necessity excludes 'free-will'. Thus, God the Father begets a son of necessity; yet He begets Him willingly and freely, for He is not forced to do so” (BOW, 220), drives at this.

[33] John Calvin, in his Eternal Predestination of God, and in Institutes, was careful to make this distinction. As comments Lane (1996:xxviii), “the purpose of this atypical foray into 'Scholastic subtlety' is to enable Calvin to dissociate himself from Luther's doctrine of absolute necessity.”

[34] “I said 'of necessity'; I did not say 'of compulsion'...a man without the Spirit does not do evil against his will...but he does it spontaneously and voluntarily” (BOW, 102).

[35] That is, natural freedom, with respect to mundane things; complete inability and bondage with regards to spiritual matters and draws towards God. 

[36] Perhaps Erasmus' questions were somewhat off target in that he cannot conclusively deduce from the Bible that commandments (imperatives) were an indication of ability in man – something Luther correctly refutes. Imperatives are not indicatives, and say nothing about ability. However, the bull's eye of the matter is really how morality or culpability can be established.

[37] BOW, 102.

[38] As seen in what we have called his necessitarian argument

[39] Althaus' (1966:141-160), Theology of Martin Luther is one of the few commentators that see no tension between MRCJ and Luther's unfree will.

[40] This is to yet affirm nothing about the kind of freewill that is necessary to establish moral responsibility. It simply is to say that even Luther must acquiesce, as he does, that freewill is necessitated by MRCJ.

[41] The standard theological position has been that sin came as a result of freewill wrongly exercised. Free creatures made a choice that was contra what God commanded, hence sin. The explanation may not be thorough or even adequate. But tentatively, the theory has well served the purposes of theology and of philosophy, and makes better biblical sense.

[42] BOW, 139