Bondage of the Will

What part does God play in our salvation, and what part do we play? It's a matter of critical importance, according to Luther, as to whether we think in the final analysis our salvation is the work of God, or it is something that to a certain degree is accomplished by our own efforts and our own striving and our own merit. Throughout church history, some people have said that man is totally free to choose salvation. In the 16th century, a debate over free will erupted between Martin Luther and the Dutch theologian Erasmus, a debate that continues today in the church.

All this week on Renewing Your Mind, we will dive into Dr. R.C. Sproul's series, Willing to Believe, and discover why man's will is not free. We'll also learn why some assumptions about free will actually undermine the gospel. One of the most fascinating duels that ever took place in the theological arena between theologians was the duel that erupted in the 16th century between probably the most respected Catholic humanistic scholar of the era and Martin Luther. It was Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, the man who reconstructed the received text of the New Testament, who was known around the world for his great scholarship and acumen, who in the early stages of the Reformation sided with Luther and who wrote the praise of folly, which was a bitter, sarcastic satire against the corruptions of the clergy within the Catholic church.

But nevertheless, when it came to the cardinal issues of the Reformation itself, Erasmus broke with Luther and remained faithful to the Roman Catholic church and then set about to critique the teachings of Martin Luther. And the debate was prompted in 1524 when Erasmus published his work entitled The Diatribe Concerning Free Will, in which he gave an exhaustive and comprehensive critique of the theology of Luther and the Reformers. The following year, in 1525, Luther responded to Erasmus' work with his famous book De servo arbitrary, which is called The Bondage of the Will. Now, of the more than fifty volumes that come down to us from the pen of Martin Luther, Luther himself regarded as his most important work his work on the bondage of the will in the reply that he gave to Erasmus. And I believe that for the most part, church historians and theologians have agreed with Luther's assessment that that was his most important work.

And I commend to you the reading of the bondage of the will as it remains a Christian classic and certainly of vital importance to this whole controversy over free will as it relates both to the doctrine of election and to the doctrine of original sin. We know, for example, that the battle cry of the Reformation and the central issue of which the debate raged in the sixteenth century was over this concept of sola fide, which is the slogan that means by faith alone, summarizing in capsule form Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone. However, Luther at this point regarded that in a certain sense the doctrine of justification was merely the tip of the iceberg of the controversy and that there was an even more serious theological matter that was hidden beneath the surface but was certainly engaged and in play in the controversy that divided Christendom so deeply in the sixteenth century, and that was the doctrine of sola gratia. For Luther, sola fide grows out of sola gratia and rests upon sola gratia and depends upon sola gratia for its force. And in his work on the bondage of the will, Luther in speaking of the doctrine of election or predestination, which is so controversial, made the comment that in his judgment election is the core ecclesia or the very heart of the church. Again, you have to remember that Luther was an Augustinian monk, and his primary mentor theologically was Augustine. And it was Augustine who had emphasized so strongly centuries earlier his concept of sola gratia, that we are saved by grace and by grace alone. And it's for that reason that justification would have to be by faith alone, as Paul declares when he speaks in Ephesians that we are justified by grace through faith. And so, Luther was trying to probe beneath the surface of the central issue of justification and get to its foundational underpinnings in the classical doctrine of grace.

And that, of course, immediately touches on the issue of the extent of our fallenness and the strength of our human will. And in his diatribe, Erasmus argued that the whole issue of free will in this debate was a matter that was really not all that important. It was an academic point, a technicality, that could better be left to scholars and not something that people should be all of that concerned with. We recall that also in the diatribe, if you study Erasmus' position, you see how ambiguous and I, frankly, think confused it is, and he vacillates back and forth among various ideas of freedom and of grace.

But he also makes the observation that on certain issues like this, as an academician, he would prefer to suspend judgment and not to come down on one side or the other, because he thought that that was the prudent thing to do in matters of this sort. To which Luther replied by saying in typical Lutheran fashion, away with the skeptics, away with the academics, spiritus sanctus non est skeptitus, the Holy Spirit is not a skeptic, and the truths that He has revealed are more precious to us than life itself. And with respect to the importance of the question of the degree of power the fallen human will has or lacks, Luther makes this comment responding to Erasmus. Erasmus had said that the doctrine of free will is, quote, one of those useless doctrines that we can do without. Luther said, it is irreligious, idle and superfluous, you say, to want to know whether our will affects anything in matters pertaining to eternal salvation or whether it is wholly passive under the work of grace. But here you speak to the contrary, saying the Christian piety consists in striving with all our might, and you say apart from the mercy of God our will is ineffective. Here you plainly assert that the will is in some respect active in matters pertaining to salvation, for you represent it as striving, and again you represent it as the object of divine action when you say that without God's mercy it is ineffective.

But you do not define the limits within which we should think of the will as acting and as acted upon. You take pains to engender ignorance as to what God's mercy and man's will can affect by your very teaching as to what man's will and God's mercy do affect. Now, what Luther is saying here is this, that the question of what part God plays in my salvation and what part I play in my salvation has everything to do with our religious posture before God and everything to do with our understanding of the grace of God, our appreciation of the grace of God, our worship of God, and our dependence of God. It's a matter of critical importance, according to Luther, as to whether we think in the final analysis our salvation is the work of God or it is something that to a certain degree is accomplished by our own efforts and our own striving and our own merit. Here we see another one of the slogans of the Reformation lurking behind the scenes, and that is the expression sola deo gloria, to God alone the glory.

Am I to reduce the glory that belongs to God for my redemption and arrogate some of the praise and glory to myself, or is it proper and the religious spirit of the Christian heart to understand that salvation is of the Lord, that we have been rescued as slaves who could not liberate themselves, as debtors who could not pay their debt, so that we sing praises to God's grace throughout our lives? Luther said this is a matter of supreme importance to the health of the Christian's life, and so it is not just a matter that should be reserved for the halls of academia or to scholars alone. Now again, Erasmus was concerned about some of the practical consequences that might flow out of the Reformation teaching on the moral inability of man and the sovereignty of divine grace. He says, what can be more useless than to publish to the world the paradox that all we do is done not by free will but of mere necessity, and Augustine's view that God works in us both good and evil, that He rewards His own good works in us and punishes His own evil works in us. Erasmus said this would open a floodgate of iniquity and would spread such news openly to the people.

And he raised this practical question. If this doctrine of election were to be taught, what wicked man would amend his life? Who would believe that God loved him?

And who would fight against his flesh? Now, if you recall, when we looked at the system called semi-Pelagianism, and we looked at the writings of Cassian or Cassianus, and we saw Cassianus reacting against Augustine's teaching on nature and grace, that Cassianus raised these exact same objections against Augustine, saying that if the doctrine of election were to be taught and man's moral inability were to be proclaimed, that it would be the end of preaching, be the end of evangelism, it would be the end of anybody's seeking improvement in their character. How does Luther respond to these questions?

Well, listen to them. Luther is stating it this way. You say, Erasmus, who will try to reform his life? The answer Luther gives, nobody. Erasmus, who will believe that God loves him? Luther answers, nobody.

Nobody can. But the elect shall believe it, and the rest will perish without believing it, raging and blaspheming. Erasmus said that a floodgate of iniquity is opened by our doctrines. Luther said, so be it. Luther is willing to go to the final point on this. He said, hey, what's at stake here is the character of God. And if by teaching what the Bible teaches about our utter dependence upon the grace of God to redeem us is going to cause people not to strive to come to God in their spiritual death, he said, if that's the floodgate of iniquity and that it's opened, he said, let it be opened.

He said, because in the first place, and the main point is what? Who will try to amend their lives? Who will incline themselves to the things of God if we teach this doctrine?

Nobody, because nobody can anyway, and nobody does anyway. That's the whole point. As the Apostle had made it clear, no one seeks after God. That in our fallen condition, we are so much enslaved by our sin that we don't want to come to the things of God. That's the very point that Luther is trying to say. And so you say, if I teach people that in their fallen condition they will never strive or incline themselves to come to God, that that would cause them to stop striving and inclining themselves to come to God when they can't do it anyway, that's absurd. Again, he's saying, the problem that we have in our fallen condition is that nobody wants God. We don't want God in our thinking, we don't want God in our lives, and we're not pursuing God over heaven and earth.

We're fleeing from God as far and as fast as we possibly can. And our only hope is that if God seeks us out and turns us around and brings us to Himself. Later on, Luther deals with Erasmus' definition of free will by reproducing it in his own book. He says, I suppose then that this power of the human will means the power or faculty or disposition or aptitude to will or not to will, to choose or reject, to approve or disapprove, and to perform all the other actions of the will. Now, what it means for this same power to apply itself or to turn away, I do not see unless it refers to the actual willing or not willing, choosing or rejecting, approving or disapproving. That is the very action of the will itself. So, we must suppose that this power is something that comes between the will and its action, something by which the will itself elicits the act of willing or not willing, and by means of which the action of willing or not willing is elicited, nothing else is imaginable or conceivable.

Now, that may sound a little bit arcane to you. That concept that I've just read to you in Luther will be expanded in much greater clarity later on by Jonathan Edwards. But the simple point that Luther is making here is he's asking this question. If it all comes down to your willing or not willing, your rejecting or accepting, your choosing or not choosing to cooperate with the grace of God, that is, God's grace is given to you, to this person and to this person. But in the final analysis, it's up to your free will or His free will to determine your destiny. What is it that is found in your fallen nature that will cause this person's will to say yes and that person's will to say no? There's something between the ability to will and the actual action of making the choice. And of course, what Augustine had said centuries earlier and Luther is reiterating at this point is that it's the inclination of the soul or the desire. If this person says yes to grace, it can only be because this person wants to say yes to grace. And if this person says no to grace, it can only be because this person wants to say no to grace. What could be more simple than that?

Well, that's simple to state the problem or to state the question is simple. But again, the difficulty is in determining why one person would say yes and another person would say no. Obviously, the person who said yes has a positive desire towards God before they're even born in the Spirit.

The other person doesn't have a positive inclination towards God. And the person who has the right inclination will make the right choice. The person will make the right choice. The person who has the wrong inclination will make the wrong choice.

And if it's strictly on the basis of the operation of the human will that determines that in the final analysis, that means that this person has done the righteous thing. This person has done the evil thing. This person has something of which to boast.

This person has nothing of which to boast. I'll often express this to people in these terms. I'll say to them, why are you a Christian and your neighbor isn't? And they'll say, well, because I chose to be, and they chose not to be. And I'll say, okay, is it because you're more righteous than your neighbor? Now, what's the normal Christian answer to that question?

You know what it's supposed to be. You know you're never supposed to stand up and say, well, the reason I'm a Christian and somebody else isn't is because I'm more righteous. This is the zenith or the nadir, really, of self-righteousness, to say that the reason I'm in the kingdom and somebody is out of the kingdom is because I am righteous and they are not.

That sounds like the Pharisee in the temple who was boasting of his relationship with God. Most Christians shrink from saying that it's because I'm more righteous. But they'll stop at that point and say, well, is it because you're more intelligent than that person?

No, they don't want to say that because they know if they do say it. The next thing I'm going to say is, where did you get that intelligence? Did you earn it or did you receive it? Is it an accomplishment or a gift? And then the discussion on their part wants to end. They say, it's not because I'm more righteous.

And I say, why isn't it because you're more righteous? Did you make the right decision? Yes. Did your neighbor make the wrong decision? Yes. Is it good that you made this decision? Yes. Is it bad that they made that decision?

Yes. Then why don't you say you're more righteous than that person? Because they know they're not supposed to, but they have to if they really believe that in the final analysis that which determines their inclusion in the kingdom of God is the right and good choice that they made when they had the opportunity. Now, the other point that Luther debated with Erasmus was this matter that I'd read moments ago of Erasmus complaining about necessity. According to Erasmus, if God knows everything in advance of what is going to take place, then all things that happen in this world happen by necessity.

And if all things happen by necessity, then we can't possibly be free at all. For Erasmus, necessity means coercion. If my actions are necessary with respect to God's foreknowledge according to Erasmus, then they must take place through some kind of coercion.

Luther said, no, no, no, no, no. He said, God does not force me to make the decisions that I make in my normal daily living, but they are necessary with respect to His knowledge because if God knows today what I am going to do freely tomorrow without His coercion, will I do that tomorrow? Is it certain that I will do it tomorrow? It is a necessity of certainty insofar as it most certainly will come to pass because God doesn't make mistakes in His knowledge. That doesn't mean that God is forcing me to do it or that I'm forced by chance or anything else. That God knows in advance what I'm going to do does not mean that He has to coerce me to do it. So that's why Luther makes this distinction between the necessity of consequence and the necessity of the consequent, which is a technical distinction to explain this. But what he's saying to Erasmus, we are not teaching with our view of election or divine sovereignty of the fall of man that God coerces sinners to sin. He says people choose what they want, but the problem is what they want is wicked. It is certain that they will choose what they want by virtue of God's knowledge of it, but God doesn't force those who desire to do good to do bad or to see force people who want only evil to do good.

It's important to define our terms, isn't it? Luther made it clear that before salvation we do have freedom to choose, but every choice we make is in bondage to sin. Our focus this week on Renewing Your Mind is Dr. R.C. Sproul's series, Willing to Believe, The Controversy Over Free Will. The series contains 12 23-minute lessons, and we will send you the three-DVD set when you give a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. You can make your request at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343. Before we close today, I'd like to address our ministry partners. Your faithful financial contributions of $25 or more per month supports not just Renewing Your Mind but all of our outreaches around the world. If you're a ministry partner listening today, thank you from all of us here at Ligonier. And if you've been considering becoming a partner, you can learn more about it from my colleagues at 800-435-4343. Well, tomorrow on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. Sproul will turn to John 6 to help us see how man's ability is spelled out in Scripture. Join us Tuesday for a lesson titled, Voluntary Slaves.