The Bondage of the Will (De Servo Arbitrio)

Summary

The Bondage of the Will is Martin Luther's long Latin reply to Erasmus's On Free Will, published at Wittenberg in December 1525, fifteen months after Erasmus's book appeared. It was written in a crowded year: the Peasants' War had been fought and suppressed, the Elector Frederick the Wise had died, and Luther had married Katharina von Bora in June. Luther follows Erasmus's treatise section by section, quoting or summarizing it and answering each point, and then adds a positive case of his own. He begins by thanking Erasmus for attacking the real question rather than side issues such as the papacy, purgatory or indulgences, and then turns sharply on Erasmus's preface. Against Erasmus's preference for suspending judgment, Luther argues that Christians must delight in assertions, because the Holy Spirit is no sceptic and has written plain truths on the heart. Against the claim that Scripture is obscure on this point, he distinguishes the external clarity of Scripture, its words read and preached, from its internal clarity, the understanding the Spirit gives, and holds that the subject matter of Scripture has been made plain in Christ even where particular words are hard. On necessity, Luther argues that God foreknows and wills all things immutably, so that human beings act by a necessity of immutability, not of compulsion: they do evil willingly, not under force, but cannot change their own will. He pictures the human will as a beast standing between two riders, God and Satan, going where its rider wills. Free will, he says, is properly a divine title; in things below, such as eating and managing property, people choose freely, but in matters of salvation the will is bound. Answering Erasmus's proof texts, Luther argues that commands show what people ought to do, not what they can do, since through the law comes knowledge of sin; he disputes the authority of Ecclesiasticus; he insists that Pharaoh's hardening, Jacob and Esau and the potter's clay mean what they appear to mean. He distinguishes God preached and revealed in the Word, whom Christians must seek, from God hidden in his majesty, whose secret will is not to be searched. In the final sections he builds his own case from Paul's Romans and from John's contrast of flesh and spirit, and closes by saying he would not want free will even if it were offered, because his salvation would then rest on his own unstable effort rather than on God's faithful promise. The English translations of Henry Cole and Edward Thomas Vaughan (both 1823) are public domain, but they survive only in poor scanned copies, so the library stores no full text.

Top Lessons

• The case for assertion

  Luther holds that faith must make confident assertions about what God has revealed, and that a Christian cannot treat the central truths of Scripture as matters of opinion. He sets this against Erasmus's preference for suspending judgment.

• Necessity without compulsion

  Luther distinguishes a necessity of immutability, by which God's will and foreknowledge cannot fail, from a necessity of compulsion, by which someone is forced against his will. Sinners act willingly, but they cannot change the bent of their own will.

• Law and gospel

  Luther answers Erasmus's argument from commands by saying that the law shows what we ought to do and so reveals our inability, while the gospel promises what God does for us in Christ. The distinction is central to all his theology.

• The hidden and the revealed God

  Luther separates God as he has revealed himself in the Word, who invites and wills the life of sinners, from God hidden in his majesty, whose secret will we are not to investigate. Christians are to cling to God preached in Christ.

• Assurance as the goal

  Luther ends by saying that even if free will were offered he would refuse it, because he could never be sure he had done enough; only God's promise gives certainty. For Luther, the doctrine is ultimately about comfort.

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Medical Lens

The work is a theological treatise on grace, necessity and the interpretation of Scripture; it contains no medical material.