The Bondage of the Will

Overview

De Servo Arbitrio, The Bondage of the Will, was published by Luther in December 1525 as a direct response to Desiderius Erasmus’s Diatribe on Free Will (1524). Erasmus, the most celebrated scholar of the age and a man who had initially sympathized with some aspects of Luther’s reform, had finally been pressed by Rome into open opposition. He chose as his battleground the question of the freedom of the will in salvation. Luther’s reply was one of the most sustained and powerful pieces of theological writing he ever produced.

Luther later wrote: “I praise and commend you highly for this also, that unlike all the rest you alone have attacked the real issue, the essence of the matter in dispute, and have not wearied me with irrelevant issues about the papacy, purgatory, indulgences.” He recognized that Erasmus had correctly identified the anthropological nerve of the Reformation: if man has a free will capable of cooperating with grace, the entire logic of sola gratia changes.

The Argument

The will is not free in spiritual matters. Luther’s central claim is that the fallen human will, when it comes to God and salvation, is not free but enslaved, enslaved to sin, self, and ultimately Satan. This is not a claim about compulsion in the ordinary sense: man acts according to his desires, and no one forces him. But his desires are corrupt. He cannot, of himself, desire God, turn to God, or cooperate with God’s grace. He is, in Augustine’s phrase, non posse non peccare, not able not to sin.

God is sovereign over salvation. Because man cannot save himself, salvation must be entirely from God. Grace is not an aid to a will that has already chosen God; it is the resurrection of a will that was dead. Luther employs the image of a horse ridden either by God or by the devil, wherever it goes, it is ridden by one or the other. The horse does not choose its rider.

The hidden God and the revealed God. Luther addresses the pastoral problem that divine sovereignty raises: if God is sovereign, why does He not save all? Luther distinguishes between the hidden God (Deus absconditus) and the revealed God (Deus revelatus). What God does in His hidden sovereignty is not our business; what He has revealed in Christ and the gospel is. We are to look to Christ, not to speculate about the hidden will of God.

The clarity of Scripture. Erasmus had argued that Scripture is too obscure on this question to decide it and that we should defer to the church’s tradition. Luther responds with a vigorous defense of Scripture’s perspicuity: the things necessary for salvation are not hidden in obscure passages but stated plainly throughout. The problem is not that Scripture is dark but that men’s hearts are dark.

Significance

Luther considered The Bondage of the Will his best and most important work. Late in life he said he would acknowledge only the Catechism and this book as worth preserving from his writings. The reason is clear: it addresses the foundation beneath everything else. If the will is free, then salvation is a cooperative project and the glory of salvation is shared. If the will is bound, then salvation is entirely of God, and sola gratia is not a slogan but a theological necessity.

The book marks the definitive break between Luther and the Erasmian humanists who had hoped for a moderate, scholarly reform of the church from within. Erasmus wanted a reformation of morals and learning; Luther wanted a reformation of the doctrine of grace. They could not both be right, and after 1525 they both knew it.

The Bondage of the Will also stands as a precursor to the fully developed Reformed anthropology. Calvin’s treatment of the will in the Institutes, the Westminster Confession’s Chapter 9 on free will, and the 1689’s identical chapter all presuppose the argument Luther made here. On this question, Lutheran and Reformed theology stand together.

A Key Passage

Full Text

The full text of The Bondage of the Will is available at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.