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This is the fifth installment in our article series, “An Introduction to the Bondage of the Will,” written to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will.
Five hundred years ago, the Reformation was already well underway. Yet it was still only seven or eight years old. How much was accomplished in that brief span! The ninety-five theses were posted, the theology of the cross was explained to Luther’s fellow monks, debates took place, many documents were written, the Wittenberg School was utterly transformed, Luther was excommunicated (but not before he excommunicated the Pope first), and the Latin text of Scripture was translated into German.
Then, sometime in 1524, Desiderius Erasmus woke to a single, irritating “assertion” made by Martin Luther. Of course, Luther had already said many bold things about fake penance and fake papacy—but the one that lit Erasmus’ flame was simply: "Free will is fake!" What? Free will is a fraud? Who would say such a thing? If that were true, the church would be finished. So the thin, pale, reluctant Erasmus set out to save Western Civilization. True, nobody knew what free will was, or who had it, but he decided to teach Luther a lesson about how a scholar handles the unknown: the “tangled labyrinth” of “free choices” of a will.
Erasmus was clever. He knew that the church taught nothing but free will. In one way or another, every sacrament, doctrine, and liturgy declared: God gave you a free will and a law to guide it—now use it or lose it! It wasn’t just the church; the entire world, including the best Greek and Roman philosophers, agreed. Western civilization is built on the code of law that presumes and demands free will. Submit! Choose! Receive! Agree! But Erasmus also understood that, as fundamental as the concept “free will” was in the Church, what that “thing” actually was, was largely unknown. It was the way “faith” was taught, and so was asserted but unproven. Even the Bible seemed unclear about what power you have inside you to respond to God’s call.
Yet, for Erasmus, there sat the annoying statement from Luther: free will is a fiction! We can’t let Luther get away with that. It’s one thing to claim the Pope is the one person in the whole world who doesn’t have a calling from God, but it’s another to run around claiming the will is bound! Bound by what or whom? How? So Erasmus said, “it seemed good to my friends that I should try my hand and see whether, as a result of our little set-to, the truth might be made more plain.” Let’s talk it out! Let’s debate! You present your case, Luther, then I will present mine.
Erasmus was supposed to be the great Reformer of the church. Luther was a Johnny-come-lately, and nothing but a boxer, a wrestler, and a troublemaker. Erasmus was a pale, slight man who described himself as having a “temperamental horror of fighting” and who was “not built for wrestling matches.” Who started the return to Scripture? Erasmus. Who initially challenged the church as the “author” of Scripture (as if the bishops were the ones who authorized the canon of Scripture)? Erasmus. Who revealed the lies the church had fed its people for years, claiming authority from “tradition”? Erasmus. But now, who was getting all the credit and suddenly jumping in like a UFC fighter in the cage: Luther!
While the stance of open, honest debate and willingness to accept government authority might be the best way to live in this world, Luther understood it wasn’t the proper approach to God.
So, after the weak and festering Erasmus saw one publication after another from Luther, he finally got up the gumption to take the rookie down. Erasmus was confident that when he wrote his little rebuttal (On the Freedom of the Will), it would humble Luther from his mighty Reformer perch and force him into the arena of debate over this conflict of ideas. Isn’t that theology? What did Erasmus expect to be the outcome of such a match? Two sides would debate, the debate would generate many opinions on each side, and then the audience would vote on who won (Luther usually lost these judgments). Afterward, everyone would go home and wonder: who knows? It’s a close call whether we have free will or not, but it seems Erasmus and the “free willies” have my vote. Because there’s always dissent within the church and the world, we must then agree to disagree, adhering to the broader tradition of the church. Ultimately, do we have free will when it comes to our faith and the chance for heaven? We don’t know! What do we do in the meantime? We default to the pope in such cases of open debate.
While the stance of open, honest debate and willingness to accept government authority might be the best way to live in this world, Luther understood it wasn’t the proper approach to God. If you don’t know the answer to the most basic question in Scripture (and the most vital one in your Christian life), “Do I have the free will to choose, accept, believe in, or otherwise align myself with evil or good, or not?” then you’re in serious trouble. “Free will” isn’t about whether you prefer daylight savings time or not. The answer to the question of will is directly linked to faith: “What should I believe? I need to know who my God is and what he desires from me. Most importantly, I need to know what he thinks of me right now.” Luther began his “search for a gracious God” from that point, asking: “Is there anyone out there—any god at all––who’s not demanding I follow the law and threatening me with eternal damnation if I don’t? Is there grace out there that is outside and beyond any law, or not?”
If my “God search” suggests that I have free will and must use it properly, then I need to be certain of one thing. I know God gave me the law so I could make choices for or against him. But I need to know one more thing: “When I do what God’s law requires and use my free will correctly, will he give me my reward of heaven? Is that the way it works? I need to understand the rules and trust that God will be faithful to them—so that when I exercise my free will according to what he demands, he will bless me for it.”
It was not just that Luther felt bad about himself or that he was a deeply troubled monk who could not learn a little “self-love.” This was a matter of God himself. Who is God? And what does he want? This is pure theology, and attempts to answer that question will either take you to Erasmus’ “unknown” God, or it will lead to Luther’s “known” God. If a man goes to the unknown, unpreached, naked God, he will find that God is unclear about the arrangement between the law and its final reward. Sometimes, in life or the Bible, God seems to be a strict letter-of-the-law man who punishes sinners. At other times, he fiddles around with “mercy.” Mercy sounds good at first, but what a mess! God told Moses: “I have mercy on whom I will have mercy.” Okay, but who is that? Paul even says, “it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” (Rom. 9:15). Who knows where mercy blows?
God unpreached is a human disaster—at least a disaster for “free will.”
Who can want that kind of God? The unpreached God decides whatever he wants whenever he wants it. He doesn’t follow his own rules. Paul even says that for years, God “overlooked” the sins of his chosen Israel—up to the time of his Son, Christ, who became a mercy seat on which to dump all sins ever committed (Romans 3). Then and there, Luther learned the difference between God without a preacher and God with a preacher. God unpreached is a human disaster—at least a disaster for “free will.” But if you listen to what Christ is saying, outside the law, in the form of his promise: “I forgive you all your sins,” then you have a whole different God who does not leave you uncertain at the end of a debate.
Erasmus needed a preacher, and Luther was that preacher. Everything for you depends on the same dynamic: you will either be sent into the wilderness with your “free willy” searching for the merciful God, or you will have him come into your life and say, “I absolve you.” The first is theology by human thought; the second is theology by a preached promise. They could not be more different. The final results could not be farther apart—as far as the East is from the West.
