The Bondage of the Will, 1525

Martin Luther, Kirsi I. Stjerna, Volker Leppin, Kirsi I. Stjerna, Volker Leppin, Kirsi I. Stjerna

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781506413457
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506413464
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Konfessionen

In autumn 1525, Luther wrote The Bondage of the Will as a response to humanist and theologian Erasmus of Rotterdams On Free Will.

Luthers treatise is important on four accounts: First, Luther wanted to show his own humanist education. Second, against Erasmus, who had maintained that the question of free will could not be decided just on the basis of the Bible, Luther stressed the clarity imbedded in Scripture. Third, Luther stressed that his denial of the free will pertained to the issue of salvation, while in other areas of life not relevant for this fundamental existential matter, free will could be acknowledged. Finally, he introduces the distinction of the revealed and the hidden God to make clear that a Christian must focus on God as shown in Jesus Christ rather than speculating about Gods potency in general. Luthers argument on the matter of the bound and free will poses a challenge and an invitation for constructive contemporary theology.

This volume is excerpted from The Annotated Luther series, Volume 2. Each volume in the series contains annotations, illustrations, and notes to help shed light on Luthers context and to interpret his writings for today.

The Bondage of the Will

1525

VOLKER LEPPIN

INTRODUCTION

There would have been no Reformation without humanism: going back to the sources—ad fontes!—was the key motto of many of the humanists, and Luther’s program of sola scriptura fitted best to it. Also, it was the Novum Instrumentum, Erasmus’s new edition of the New Testament, that helped Luther develop his ideas while reading Paul’s letter to the Romans.1 Even more, when Melanchthon came to Wittenberg in 1518, and when Luther was admired by the humanists at the Heidelberg disputation2 the same year, the alliance between humanism and reformation seemed to be perfect.3

This is true, although in Heidelberg, among other positions, Luther maintained this radical conclusion: the free will after the fall is nothing more than a name. Later on, this issue would become the point of serious contention between Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536), the leader of the humanists in the north of the Alps, and Luther. Erasmus did not come into the struggle on his own, but he was strongly encouraged by others to write against Luther on the question of the free will. Concerning his planned tract, he was in contact with King Henry VIII of England (1491–1547) as well as with Pope Clement VII (1478–1534). Finally, in the beginning of September 1524, Erasmus’s De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collation (On the Free Will. Discourses or Comparisons), was published.

The title indicates the two parts of his treatise: the first part was a comparison of biblical sentences relevant to the question of the free will. With this, Erasmus accepted Luther’s methodological demand to discuss on biblical grounds only. But at the same time, he argued that the biblical view on this matter was not absolutely evident or decisive. He showed that different passages of the Bible argued for one or the other side of the question and thus led to possibly different answers. This observation gave Luther the justification for the discourse that ensued in the second part where he argued philosophically in a balanced manner. Holding with Luther that human salvation depended fully on God, nevertheless, Erasmus stated that the human free will had survived the fall, but in a weakened mode.

The title page of Erasmus’ text of the New Testament, 1516.

Portrait of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam by Pilaster Hans Holbein the Younger (1498–1543).

When Luther read this treatise, he was horrified. It was not a surprise to him that the former collaborator did not share all his convictions. But now he was faced with something he could not accept or ignore, even if his first reaction had been to not even bother responding in public, as he wrote to Georg Spalatin4 on 1 November 1524.a Just sixteen days later, Luther announced: “I will answer to Erasmus, not just because of himself, but because of those who misuse his authority for their own glory against Christ.”b He was not the only one to distance himself from Erasmus: also the Strasburg reformers Wolfgang Capito (1478–1541), Caspar Hedio (1494–1542), and Martin Bucer (1491–1551) supported Luther in his opposition of the man they saw opening the way for the Antichrist—even if, they confessed, they had learned a lot from Erasmus.c

Actually, Luther had no time to answer quickly. Other problems were coming into the foreground, mainly the Peasants’ Wars. Asked for his statement, Luther suddenly became engaged in a severe debate about the legitimacy of this uproar of peasants demanding their rights. Luther felt his popularity failing and feared that the war could destroy all his efforts for reforms. In addition, he got married in 1525 to Katharina von Bora (1499–1552)—an important step in his development as a man and a reformer—but also one that only further fueled his critics who jeered about the monk becoming a spouse. Luther took the whole spring of 1525 to stew on his answer against Erasmus, as his letters reveal, with several allusions to this issue,d but he had no time. As late as 27 September 1525, Luther wrote to Nicholaus Hausmann (c. 1478–1538):5 “I am now fully engaged in confuting Erasmus.”e Not long after, in December, the De servo arbitrio (The Bondage of the Will) was published.

The treatise is important on four accounts: (1) as a witness of the serious intellectual debates in the Reformation time; (2) as a contribution to the developing Lutheran teaching on the Holy Scripture; (3) on free will; and (4) on God. Concerning the culture of debate in which Luther operated, one sees Luther acting as someone who wanted to show his own humanist education. No text of his is as full of allusions to antic traditions as De servo arbitrio is. Luther wanted to show Erasmus and, even more, the public that he was not intellectually inferior, even if he, in a figure of humility, confessed his own limitations. And he did not hide the main difference: while Erasmus tried to open the discussion and left it to his readers to decide which position would be right, Luther impressed upon his readers that the struggle was about the truth and that it was urgent to come to the conclusion that Luther himself clearly suggested.

Luther’s absolute conviction about what was right lay in his doctrine of Scripture. Against Erasmus, who had maintained that the question of free will could not be decided just on the basis of the Bible, Luther stressed the clarity imbedded in Scripture: if human beings did not understand Scripture satisfactorily, this was not the failure of Scripture but of the human reason, which was not able to understand the depth of God’s truth. With these passages, Luther laid the grounds for the fundamental Lutheran understanding of the infallibility of Scripture and its centrality in Lutheran theology, especially prominent in the so-called Lutheran orthodoxy.6

Luther’s position on the main question seems easy to summarize—and yet it is not. There is no question at all that he upheld his early conviction that human beings do not have free will. But he tried to reconcile this with the human experience, which calls on individuals to be able to decide on many things in everyday life. Luther thus stressed that his denial of the free will pertained to the issue of salvation, while in other areas of life, not relevant for this fundamental existential matter, free will could be acknowledged. Luther’s conclusions have continued to stir reflection and debate among Lutherans over the centuries and continue even today. Luther’s argument on the matter of bound/free will poses a challenge and an invitation for constructive contemporary theology.

The same can be said about the fourth question: Luther’s doctrine of God. He introduces the distinction of the revealed and the hidden God to make clear that a Christian must focus on God as shown in Jesus Christ rather than speculating about God’s potency in general. Depending on one’s own convictions, one can see this as one of Luther’s deepest spiritual insights, or as a speculative idea, leading to a destruction of a consistent image of God. However, the idea is rooted in Luther’s early conversations with his confessor Johann von Staupitz (c. 1460–1524),7 who was instrumental in directing Luther’s mind and attention to move from the fear of predestination8 to trust in the Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

These basic ideas are part of a long and sometimes confusing text that Luther completed hastily. The original Latin text was addressed to the learned scholars, but soon Luther’s colleague and the Wittenberg city pastor, Justus Jonas (1493–1555), provided a German translation to make it known also for the broader public. Erasmus himself was mainly disturbed with Luther’s style. He criticized Luther’s ferocity, idiosyncrasy, and even malicef and wrote his answer, A Defense of the Diatribe (Hyperaspistes diatribae), which was published in two volumes in 1526 and 1527. Again, external challenges and his inner reluctance prevented Luther from returning the favor with his new answer. Thus the debate eventually petered out between the two, while the issue did not die.

The consequences of this relatively brief public debate were immense: many humanists retreated from Luther because of his intransigent manner of debating. The coinciding Peasants’ Wars made things even worse. Luther’s glory failed; the former hero became a representative of intellectual headiness. Nevertheless, the text of De servo arbitrio, read independently from its immediate context, provides an abundance of theological insights for new generations of theologians to address the fundamental concerns about human freedom, God’s omnipotence, and the premise of the God-human relationship—and thus, naturally, the question about salvation.

In the text of The Bondage of the Will that follows, several cuts have been made in order to provide a representative portion of the whole. The following symbol […] is used to indicate where content has been edited out.

THE BONDAGE OF THE WILL9

To the venerable master10 erasmus of Rotterdam, Martin Luther sends grace and peace in Christ.

[Introduction]

[Luther Explains His Delay in Replying and Admits Erasmus’s Superior Talent]

That I have taken so long11 to reply to your Diatribe Concerning Free Choice, venerable Erasmus, has been contrary to everyone’s expectation and to my own custom; for until now I have seemed not only willing to accept, but eager to seek out, opportunities of this kind for writing. There will perhaps be some surprise at this new and unwonted forbearance—or fear!—in Luther, who has not been roused even by all the speeches and letters his adversaries have flung about, congratulating Erasmus on his victory and chanting in triumph, “Ho, ho! Has that Maccabee,12 that most obstinate Assertor,13 at last met his match, and dares not open his mouth against him?” Yet not only do I not blame them, but of myself I yield you a palm such as I have never yielded to anyone before; for I confess not only that you are far superior to me in powers of eloquence and native genius (which we all must admit, all the more as I am a barbarian who has always lived among barbarians14), but that you have quite damped my spirit and eagerness, and left me exhausted before I could strike a blow.

There are two reasons for this: first, your virtuosity in treating the subject with such remarkable and consistent moderation as to make it impossible for me to be angry with you; and second, the luck or chance or fate by which you say nothing on this important subject that has not been said before.15 Indeed, you say so much less, and attribute so much more to free choice than the Sophists16 have hitherto done (a point on which I shall have more to say later) that it really seemed superfluous to answer the arguments you use. They have been refuted already so often by me, and beaten down and completely pulverized in Philip Melanchthon’s Loci Communes [Commonplaces]17—an unanswerable little book, which in my judgment deserves not only to be honored with immortality but also with ecclesiastical authority. Compared with it, your book struck me as so cheap and trivial that I felt profoundly sorry for you, defiling as you were your very elegant and ingenious style with such trash,18 and quite disgusted at the utterly unworthy matter that was being conveyed in such rich ornaments of eloquence, like refuse or ordure being carried in gold and silver vases.19

The title page of Philip Melanchthon’s Loci communes rerum theologicarum, seu, Hypotyposes theologicae, a volume that later proved to be the first Protestant attempt at systematic theology.

You seem to have felt this yourself, from the reluctance with which you undertook this piece of writing. No doubt your conscience warned you that20 no matter what powers of eloquence you brought to the task, you would be unable so to gloss it over as to prevent me from stripping away the seductive charm of your words and discovering the dregs beneath, since although I am unskilled in speech, I am not unskilled in knowledge, by the grace of God. For, in full faith, I venture thus with Paul [1 Cor. 11:6] to claim knowledge for myself that I deny to you, though I grant you eloquence and native genius such as I willingly and very properly disclaim for myself.

What I thought, then, was this. If there are those who have imbibed so little of our teaching or taken so insecure a hold of it, strongly supported by Scripture though it is, that they can be moved by these trivial and worthless though highly decorative arguments of Erasmus, then they do not deserve that I should come to their rescue with an answer. Nothing could be said or written that would be sufficient for such people, even though it were by recourse to thousands of books a thousand times over, and you might just as well plow the seashore and sow seed in the sandg or try to fill a cask full of holes with water.h Those who have imbibed the Spirit who holds sway in our books have had a sufficient service from us already, and they can easily dispose of your performances; but as for those who read without the Spirit,21 it is no wonder if they are shaken like a reed by every wind.i Why, even God could not say enough for such people, even if all God’s creatures were turned into tongues. Hence I might well have decided to leave them alone, upset as they were by your book, along with those who are delighted with it and declare you the victor.

It was, then, neither pressure of work, nor the difficulty of the task, nor your great eloquence, nor any fear of you, but sheer disgust, anger, and contempt, or—to put it plainly—my considered judgment on your Diatribe that damped my eagerness to answer you. I need hardly mention here the good care you take, as you always do, to be everywhere evasive and equivocal;22 you fancy yourself steering more cautiously than Ulysses between Scylla and Charybdis as you seek to assert nothing while appearing to assert something.23 How, I ask you, is it possible to have any discussion or reach any understanding with such people unless one is clever enough to catch Proteus?24 What I can do in this matter, and what you have gained by it, I will show you later, with Christ’s help.

There have, then, to be special reasons for my answering you at this point. Faithful Christians are urging me to do so, and point out that everyone expects it, since the authority of Erasmus is not to be despised, and the truth of Christian doctrine is being imperiled in the hearts of many. Moreover, it has at length come home to me that my silence has not been entirely honorable, and that I have been deluded by my mundane prudence—or malice—into insufficient awareness of my duty, whereby I am under obligation both to the wise and to the foolish [Rom. 1:14], especially when I am called to it by the entreaties of so many Christians. For although the subject before us demands more than an external scholar, and besides him who plants and him who waters outwardly [1 Cor. 3:7], it requires also the Spirit of God to give the growth and to teach living things inwardly (a thought that has been much in my mind), yet since the Spirit is free, and blows not where we will but where he wills [John 3:8], we ought to have observed that rule of Paul, “Be urgent in season and out of season” [2 Tim. 4:2], for we do not know at what hour the Lord is coming [Matt. 24:42]. There may be, I grant, some who have not yet sensed the Spirit who informs my writings, and who have been bowled over by that Diatribe of yours; perhaps their hour has not yet come.25

And who knows but that God may even deign to visit you, excellent Erasmus, through such a wretched and frail little vesselj as myself, so that in a happy hour—and for this I earnestly beseech the Father of mercies26 through Christ our Lord—I may come to you by means of this book, and win a very dear brother. For although you think and write wrongly about free choice,k yet I owe you no small thanks, for you have made me far more sure of my own position by letting me see the case for free choice put forward with all the energy of so distinguished and powerful a mind, but with no other effect than to make things worse than before. That is plain evidence that free choice is a pure fiction;27 for, like the woman in the Gospel [Mark 5:25f.], the more it is treated by the doctors, the worse it gets. I shall therefore abundantly pay my debt of thanks to you, if through me you become better informed, as I through you have been more strongly confirmed. But both of these things are gifts of the Spirit, not our own achievement. Therefore, we must pray that God may open my mouth and your heart, and the hearts of all human beings, and that God may be present in our midst as the master who informs both our speaking and hearing.

But from you, my dear Erasmus, let me obtain this request, that just as I bear with your ignorance in these matters, so you in turn will bear with my lack of eloquence. God does not give all his gifts to one man, and “we cannot all do all things”; or, as Paul says: “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit” [1 Cor. 12:4]. It remains, therefore, for us to render mutual service with our gifts, so that each with one’s own gift bears the burden and need of the other. Thus we shall fulfill the law of Christ [Gal. 6:2].28

[Part I. Review of Erasmus’s Preface]

[Christianity Involves Assertions; Christians Are No Skeptics]

I want to begin by referring to some passages in your Preface, in which you rather disparage our case and puff up your own. I note, first, that just as in other books you censure me for obstinate assertiveness, so in this book you say that you are so far from delighting in assertions that you would readily take refuge in the opinion of the Skeptics29 wherever this is allowed by the inviolable authority of the Holy Scriptures and the decrees of the Church, to which you always willingly submit your personal feelings,30 whether you grasp what it prescribes or not. This [you say] is the frame of mind that pleases you.

I take it (as it is only fair to do) that you say these things in a kindly and peace-loving mind. But if anyone else were to say them, I should probably go for that person in my usual manner; and I ought not to allow even you, excellent though your intentions are, to be led astray by this idea. For it is not the mark of a Christian mind to take no delight in assertions; on the contrary, a human being must delight in assertions to be a real Christian. And by assertion—in order that we may not be misled by words—I mean a constant adhering, affirming, confessing, maintaining, and an invincible persevering;31 nor, I think, does the word mean anything else either as used by the Latins32 or by us in our time.

I am speaking, moreover, about the assertion of those things that have been divinely transmitted to us in the sacred writings. Elsewhere we have no need either of Erasmus or any other instructor to teach us that in matters that are doubtful or useless and unnecessary, assertions, disputings, and quarreling are not only foolish but impious, and Paul condemns them in more than one place.l Nor are you, I think, speaking of such things in this place—unless, in the manner...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Publisher's Note
• Series Introduction
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• The Bondage of the Will, 1525
• Image Credits
• Notes
• Verses