The Bondage of the Will - Martin Luther

The Bondage of the Will (Luther, 1525)

While I was in a Reformation-era mood, I thought it might be fun to read a primary source. Boy was I right!  Luther's book on the omnipotence of God was written in response to Erasmus' Diatribe, which maintained man's ability to choose to follow God of his own free will (and which, as a matter of course, accused Luther of heresy).  Luther is not only surprisingly readable, but his fiery passion positively blazes on every page.  Add in some good old-fashioned wit and creative insults to his debate opponent, and who knew polemic writing could be so vivacious?

I wish I could do Martin Luther's style justice. He is undoubtedly learned, but he doesn't flaunt his learning, and he is very direct and easy to read. He dissects Erasmus's book methodically, yet the argument does not drag or flag over the entire 400 pages. He writes with a passion that could be observed in your pick of Internet news article commenters, yet with a precision and erudition that is decidedly absent from that forum. I'm sure there is a bit of self-interest involved -- how could there not be? -- as he defends his arguments and beliefs against the aspersions Erasmus cast on them, but on the whole, his passion is for the accurate expounding and applying of Scripture to the question at hand, which is, "Do humans have a free will to choose to follow God, or is God truly all-powerful over our will?"

This is a question that has divided Christians since the beginning and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future.  Luther supports his arguments in favor of God's omnipotence very convincingly, both from the Bible and from example. The most convincing to me is this: that a claim to free will with regard to sin and salvation is meaningless. We are all slaves to something, whether it is pride, fear, envy, self-interest, or God.  We do not have the power to choose to discard sin any more than a prisoner can choose to walk out of his locked cell. Luther emphasizes the full power of God, who came down to us and broke our chains. His love secures our redemption and frees us to follow him, yet we had no power to obtain that freedom on our own.  And while we do appear to choose our reaction to this freedom, our will is still not free to make the choice. Either we recognize God's goodness and are unable to do anything but come in humble love and thankfulness, or our will is still enslaved, our prison is too familiar, and we wrap ourselves up in the broken chains.

I'm probably getting way out of my depth here, but that's about the gist of it. I think we are given a little more freedom than Martin Luther allows, since I think freedom is required for love, otherwise God would have truly made us robots and left the one tree out of Eden. But on the whole, this is a stirring, yet readable, theological masterwork.

Arbitrary rating: 4.5 out of 5 vivacious polemics